Technology-Supported Formative and Summative Assessment of Collaborative Scientific Inquiry.

This study defined and validated a new set of dimensions, new anchoring descriptions, and a new rubric format for assessing participation in collaboration. One strand of the research explored the use of analog videotechnology to conduct summative assessment of collaborative inquiry. The second strand of the research explored the use of video digital technology to conduct formative assessment of collaborative inquiry. Participants were from seven middle school classrooms taught by two teachers at two schools. Students in all classrooms were asked to complete a brief genetics performance assessment, and 42 student triads were videotaped for the 2 research strands. In the first strand, five graduate students evaluated the collaborations. It appeared that the summative assessment practice attained a level of precision sufficient for comparing groups of students to each other, although it did not appear that this approach is likely to yield the precision needed by any formal accountability system. In the second strand, triads of students (15 sets) were asked to review their own assessment tapes and then score their own collaboration using a scale developed for the purpose. This approach does appear to be a promising method of enhancing participation in collaboration and increasing students' ability to engage in collaborative learning that might be implemented on a larger scale.(Contains 4 tables and 29 references.)