Research brief
The impact of technology-enhanced items on test-taker disengagement
2019
By: Steven Wise, James Soland, Laurence Dupray

Description
Can technology-enhanced items increase student engagement on assessments? A new study provides insight.
View research briefRelated Topics


This study compared the test taking disengagement of students taking a remotely administered an adaptive interim assessment in spring 2020 with their disengagement on the assessment administered in-school during fall 2019.
By: Steven Wise, Megan Kuhfeld, John Cronin
Topics: Equity, Innovations in reporting & assessment, School & test engagement


This study evaluates the effects of asking items throughout the passage (i.e., embedding items) to achieve a more precise measure of reading comprehension by removing barriers for students to demonstrate their understanding. Results showed a significant impact of embedding comprehension items within reading passages on the measurement of student achievement in comparison to answering items at the end of the passage.
By: Meg Guerreiro, Elizabeth Barker, Janice Johnson
Topics: Equity, Innovations in reporting & assessment, Reading & language arts


Six insights regarding test-taking disengagement
There has been increasing concern about the presence of disengaged test taking in international assessment programs and its implications for the validity of inferences made regarding a country’s level of educational attainment. In this paper, the author discusses six important insights yielded by 20 years of research on this and implications for assessment programs.
By: Steven Wise


The impact of disengaged test taking on a state’s accountability test results
This study investigated test-taking engagement on a large-scale state summative assessment. Overall, results of this study indicate that disengagement has a material impact on individual state summative test scores, though its impact on score aggregations may be relatively minor.
By: Steven Wise, Jonghwan (Jay) Lee, Sukkeun Im
Topics: Equity, Measurement & scaling, School & test engagement


Variation in respondent speed and its implications: Evidence from an adaptive testing scenario
The more frequent collection of response time data is leading to an increased need for an understanding of how such data can be included in measurement models. Models for response time have been advanced, but relatively limited large-scale empirical investigations have been conducted. We take advantage of a large data set from the adaptive NWEA MAP Growth Reading Assessment to shed light on emergent features of response time behavior.
By: Benjamin Domingue, Klint Kanopka, Ben Staug, James Soland, Megan Kuhfeld, Steven Wise, Chris Piech
Topics: Innovations in reporting & assessment, School & test engagement


A method for identifying partial test-taking engagement
This paper describes a method for identifying partial engagement and provides validation evidence to support its use and interpretation. When test events indicate the presence of partial engagement, effort-moderated scores should be interpreted cautiously.
By: Steven Wise, Megan Kuhfeld
Topics: Innovations in reporting & assessment, Measurement & scaling, School & test engagement


Exploring the educational impacts of COVID-19
This visualization was developed to provide state-level insights into how students performed on MAP Growth in the 2020–2021 school year. Assessments are one indicator, among many, of the student impact from COVID-19. Our goal with this tool is to create visible data that informs academic recovery efforts that will be necessary in the 2022 school year and beyond.
By: Greg King
Topics: COVID-19 & schools, Innovations in reporting & assessment