SPARKS: Simulations for Performance Assessments that Report on Knowledge and Skills

Building on the success of the CAPA project, this collaboration between the Concord Consortium, the Center for Occupational Research and Development (CORD), Tidewater Community College, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, will produce a sequence of formative assessments based on simulations of electronic circuits and test equipment. The assessments will be for students in a college-level introductory electronics course, used either in the classroom or as self-paced activities outside of class. Each assessment will challenge the user to accomplish some task—for example, making a measurement or trouble-shooting a circuit—using a realistic, computer simulation. But more than just provide a good simulation, the computer will monitor, record, and interpret the student's every mouse-click and key-press, and generate scored reports for use by the student, the instructor, or both. The reports will indicate not only whether students were able to accomplish the task, but also how they approached it. If a student did something wrong, the computer will point it out; if a critical step is left out, that, too, will be observed and reported. Students will be encouraged to repeat the assessments over and over to improve their score, and the assessments will incorporate sufficient random elements so that this does not become a trivial exercise in memorization. Longitudinal reports will enable both students and instructors to view test scores over time, in order to compare and evaluate learning progress.