News

To smooth the testing experience this year, DLM has made some revisions to features found in KITE^® Educator Portal.

Special Circumstances Codes

In the event that a student cannot take or complete a high-stakes, summative assessment, a special circumstance code should be entered under the Test Management menu. Special circumstance code selection is now available for DLM high-stakes, summative assessments. Information on entering special circumstance codes can be found in the Educator Portal User Manual, Chapter 6: Testing

The Dynamic Learning Maps™ consortium has announced members of its 2015 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC). This year’s committee includes four new and four returning members. The group will first meet on Wednesday, January 28, to discuss the topics of modeling and standard setting.

TAC members advise Dynamic Learning Maps consortium staff on a variety of topics including system design, test development, psychometric and validity research design, and interpretation of findings. Over the coming years, the TAC will advise the consortium especially on how to best present the precise evidence needed for U.S. Department of Education peer review of the Dynamic Learning Maps assessment system.

All committee members hold a Ph.D. in various areas of education and are distinguished in their fields. The committee members’ areas of expertise are several, including:

• Cognitive diagnostic psychometrics and Bayesian network analysis
• Implementation and review of large-scale accountability assessment
• Accessibility and inclusion of students with significant cognitive disabilities in large-scale assessment

2015 Technical Advisory Committee members include, alphabetically:

Returning

• Jamal Abedi, University of California–Davis
• James Pellegrino, University of Illinois-Chicago
• Ed Roeber, Assessment Solutions Group/Michigan Assessment Consortium
• David Williamson, Educational Testing Service

New

• Greg Camilli, Rutgers University
• George Engelhard, University of Georgia
• Gerald Tindal, University of Oregon
• Phoebe Winter, Independent Consultant

LAWRENCE, Kan. — The Achievement and Assessment Institute (AAI) at the University of Kansas has received a $212,000 award from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a prototype web interface that would allow students, parents, teachers and researchers to understand the relationships among mathematics topics by exploring the KU-developed Dynamic Learning Maps™ (DLM^®) tool for mathematics taught in middle- and high-school grades.

The agreement extends through June 2015 and supports a cross-disciplinary team that includes the design and data-visualization expertise of Richard Branham, internationally acclaimed professor of interaction design; the math-education expertise of Angela Broaddus, AAI research associate and the learning-map expertise of Neal Kingston, professor of educational psychology and research. Kingston also serves as the project’s principal investigator.

AAI is one of six national awardees working to employ learning maps within innovative solutions for improving teaching and learning.

“Use of learning maps holds promise for enabling personalized education in ways that can dramatically improve student learning. Without user-facing spatial visualization tools, a learning map is unnavigable – it’s like attempting to read a geographic map without opening it up,” said AAI Director Kingston, who directs the DLM Alternate Assessment Consortium. “We are very excited to share the learning map with a broader audience. Since its inception, we have held the view that it has terrific potential as an educational planning tool. This partnership will support us in exploring ways to provide access to what has thus far been only available as a research tool.”

“The Institute’s excellent reputation continues to grow,” said KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little, “both in this country and elsewhere. Educators and policymakers need tools that guide classroom instruction and student learning in meaningful ways. AAI is creating rich support systems that will help educators meet the needs of 21^st-century learners.”

Initially developed by AAI’s Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation to support the Dynamic Learning Maps™ Alternate Assessment Program, the learning map resource provides a research-based, graphical illustration of thousands of language acquisition and mathematics concepts and skills learned from birth through high school. The network display also shows the many connections between concepts and skills that promote rich understanding. Access to the map through an interface specifically designed for teachers, parents and students can effectively bridge the gap between research and practice, allowing a wider audience of practitioners and families to apply lessons learned in educational research to practical learning issues in classrooms and homes.

AAI will lead a team of experts in mathematics education, interaction design and data visualization to develop an intuitive interface for navigating and viewing the learning map. The map's refined detail will support educators in identifying critical prerequisites for topics they teach; it also will help educators diagnose the sources of students’ errors and misconceptions.

Educators, parents and students from several states will play integral roles in the process of designing an intuitive interface that meets their needs. One of their first opportunities to participate will be in focus groups, during which members of the research team will meet with small groups of teachers, parents and students to gather information about how they would be interested in using the map.

Branham said AAI’s chief design principle is to maintain focus on the intended users’ needs and interaction preferences.

“By collaborating with researchers across several disciplines and interacting with teachers, students and parents, we can solve complex human-technology problems and facilitate effective learning in a way that is engaging and fun,” he said. “We believe that this project will demonstrate the value of that approach and lead to more collaborations.”

North Dakota becomes the 17th state to join the Dynamic Learning Maps Alternate Assessment Consortium (DLM), a multistate initiative developing an instructionally embedded, instructionally relevant, computer-based assessment designed to help students learn.

The DLM Consortium, led by the Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation (CETE) at the University of Kansas, now has 17 member states: Alaska, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

“We welcome North Dakota as the 17th state to join our efforts in creating meaningful instruction and assessment systems for students with significant cognitive abilities,” DLM project director Neal Kingston said. “As the consortium continues to expand, it will benefit more students and their families as well as help teachers help their students.”

The DLM Consortium is developing the Dynamic Learning Maps Alternate Assessment to help the 1 percent of the K–12 public school student population with the most significant cognitive disabilities. Even with accommodations, the general state assessments are not appropriate for these students. Therefore, these students take an alternate assessment.

Implementing the alternate assessment during the 2014–2015 school year will mark the first time most students with significant cognitive disabilities are assessed using an online, computer-based, large-scale state assessment. Their participation represents another significant step to increased equity and improving educational outcomes.

The DLM system is being designed to simultaneously support teacher instruction and student learning by having assessment tasks model good instruction and by being embedded within teachers’ classroom activities throughout the school year.

“All of North Dakota’s students deserve the best learning and assessment processes we can provide them,” North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction Baesler said. “Our statewide work group of special education teachers and program coordinators thoroughly researched the available options and believe that Dynamic Learning Maps offers the best program for our children who need an alternate assessment.”

DLM is funded through a five-year-grant awarded in late 2010 by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. The DLM Consortium is one of two multistate consortia to receive federal grants to create a next-generation alternate assessment linked to Common Core State Standards in math and English language arts for the 1 percent population.

DLM is led by CETE, a nationally recognized center specializing in large-scale assessment and online test delivery systems. For more than 30 years, CETE has developed cutting-edge testing programs and technology tools including the Kansas Assessment Program, Dynamic Learning Maps, Kansas Writing Instruction and Education Tool©, Career Pathways Assessment System, Adaptive Reading Motivation Measures, and the Accessibility for Technology Enhanced Assessments project. Many of these projects involve working with multiple states. CETE has worked with the State of Kansas for three decades to provide Kansas schools with a variety of assessment services. Through its partnership with the Kansas State Department of Education, CETE offers computerized assessments to all 286 Kansas school districts using computer testing software that CETE created.

Contacts: Annette Tait, North Dakota Department of Public Instruction, 701-328-2247;
Lisa McBride, The Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation, 785-864-6187