Domain-Specific Assessment: Bringing the Classroom into Community College Accountability

Louise Yarnall, Sara Carriere, Larry Gallagher, Geneva Haertel, Patrik Lundh, Tina Stanford

The Domain-Specific Assessment project is based on a grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences under Goal 5, Assessment. The project is conducted in partnership with Dr. Robert Mislevy of the University of Maryland, Dr. Ernest Pascarella of the University of Iowa, and the Foothill-DeAnza Community College District.

We will develop a new kind of assessment to measure how well students in the first two years of college are learning the deep forms of knowledge that cognitive researchers have identified as the foundation for domain expertise. These forms of knowledge support flexible, innovative thinking that will ensure workforce competitiveness in the global economy. In this work, we will use an established assessment design system, Principled Assessment Designs for Inquiry (PADI), which was based on the principles of evidence-centered design. PADI is a fully operational online system that we will use to engage content experts and community college instructors in designing the assessment framework and items for assessing student outcomes in two selected domains: biology and economics.

3/2008 - 2/2012 (current)

Funders & Clients 

U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences

Partners 

Research Areas

Assessment
Learning Environments
Technology Development

Keywords 

21st Century skills learning
assessment
community college
professional skills learning