Early Childhood Assessment and Intervention to Improve Grade School Students' Math and Reading

Through years of collaboration between Columbia University researchers and technology developers at MIT, a new adaptive assessment platform was developed to deliver items based on how a student responded to each question (correctly, incorrectly, or correct with a hint) and to deliver to educators individualized narratives for each student. These narratives provided a targeted description of the student's assessment experience, indicating areas of strength and weakness. The specific assessment items for this project were designed to align to relevant standards and were iteratively developed though four steps. First, skeleton narrative storyboards were developed for each of the content areashat the Children's Progress Academic Assessment (CPAA) addresses. Second, the production team authored the necessary artwork, Adobe Flash based animations, and voiceovers to create each item. Third, the items were field tested through "think alouds" between researchers and individual children and though beta-tests with larger groups of students. Fourth, modifications to the prototypes were made based on the feedback from this research.