ASSESSMENT

Writing Assessment

Writing Assessment

The Write Activity serves as the document creation Activity in Sugar. It is simple interface provides an easy starting point for children, presenting tools that make writing a story, poem, or essay simple and straightforward. It also supports tools for inserting images, creating tables, and performing layout operations (King et al. 1999: pp. 1296-1312).

The Write Activity utilizes the Journal—your work is automatically saved. The Activity also supports collaboration in the form of peer editing, group storytelling, etc.

A number of studies have attempted to establish a research base for writing assessment items In these studies, an understanding of test takers' response processes and knowledge structures is used to predict the psychometric properties of the items. This same knowledge of test takers' responses and knowledge structures is used to construct items that measure specific aspects of the test framework, e.g., reasoning versus problem solving (Pennebaker et al. 1996: pp. 601-626).

However, research supporting a research-based approach to writing items has tended to overlook the item writers themselves. Few studies have examined cognitive models of item writers' writing processes and knowledge structures. The development of a cognitive model of item-writing expertise holds promise for improving the quality of the written items. Careful examination of item writers' cognitive processes and knowledge structures should provide insight into yet another aspect of item writing and thus further inform efforts to improve the quality of items at an early phase of development by addressing and resolving areas of need in item writers' knowledge and skills related to item construction. Such an improvement effort may be especially useful in relation to writing innovative and technology-enhanced items. One example of how this improvement might be effected is through incorporation of information from an item-writing cognitive model into item writer training workshops and guides.

However, previous research on item writers' cognition has focused on the process of writing items. This research has largely ignored the role that knowledge plays in item writers' development of assessment items. Yet research in other related domains indicates that knowledge, as well as processes, plays an important role in differences between the performance of more and less experienced performers. For example, Prior (2006) found that differences in knowledge were related to performance differences between experts and novices in design under constraint. In addition, Braine (2002) and others have found that knowledge structures are important in the performance of teachers.

Experienced writers rework their papers again and again. Novice writers correct the spelling. Jucks et al. showed that when basic writers are encouraged to simply reread their prose, they can learn to spot and correct significant problems. I want to talk about the next level of revision above correction, that is, the kind of revision that reorganizes or restates one's ideas in recognition of t he needs of a reader. Most real world writing situations call for reader-based prose; that is, the writer is asked to adapt what he knows to the rhetorical problem at hand. For example, when a teacher writes a student recommendation, his ...