SRI International (SRI) will design, develop, and validate assessments of computational thinking (CT) for the high school Exploring Computer Science (ECS) curriculum. Partners in this work are ECS developers and teachers, and other experts and stakeholders in computer science (CS), computer science education and assessment. In Year 1, SRI will apply evidence-centered design to refine an existing CT-practices assessment framework and design patterns; begin to design and develop ECS assessment tasks and scoring rubrics; convene an expert panel to review the correspondence between the assessment tasks and design documents; and pilot the tasks and scoring rubrics with a small number of teachers. In Year 2, SRI will use pilot results to design and develop a final set of tasks and to build forms of the unit and summative assessments; convene a second expert panel to review the unit and summative assessment forms; and field test the unit and summative assessment forms and scoring rubrics with a larger number of teachers. Both the pilot test and field test will include cognitive interviews with students to inform and evaluate definitions used in the design. SRI will use assessment scores, response processes, and other validity evidence from the field tests to conduct psychometric evaluation of the unit and summative assessments.
The ECS curriculum is being used to engage high school students in computer science across the country. As ECS expands to more locations and students, ECS teachers will need high-quality assessments to make valid inferences about students? computational thinking practices. By co-designing formative and summative assessment resources with ECS teachers, SRI will ensure that the resources are useful to teachers. High-quality CT assessment tools and resources will lower barriers for adopting and using the ECS curriculum, as well as other CS curricula, and will pave the way to reporting actionable evidence of student progress and readiness to engage in further learning in the CT practices domain. SRI also expects the PACT project to contribute more broadly to the CS 10K project by providing new CS teachers with accessible and adaptable resources for assessing their students? CT knowledge and skills.
