Area of Application
The ADVISOR Modelling Tool builds on the Evidence-Centered Assessment Design (ECD) method as an approach to conceptualizing and structure the process of assessment design. The baseline ECD has been extended by expressing its logic with concepts from meta-modeling, and tool support has been realized.
As an illustration how this learning platform-independent approach to assessment design can be utilized to address typical challenges, examples from language learning are provided as example models.
Abstract
ECAAD stands for Evidence Centered Assessment and Activity Design. It is a method for evidentiary reasoning with educational data that builds on and generalizes the Evidence-Centered Design method suggested by Mislevy, Steinberg, and Almond in 2003. The development from ECD to ECAAD has been part of the EU-funded project NEXT-TELL (www.next-tell.eu). Like ECD, ECAAD takes the Toulmin model of evidentiary argumentation as fundamental. This model can be applied not only to educational assessment, but to reasoning with data in general. In this model, reasoning flows from data (D) to claims (C) via justification of a warrant (W), which is in turn supported by a backing (B). The inference from data, or evidence, to claims may need to be qualified by alternative explanations (A), which may be based on rebuttal evidence (R) to support them.
Toulmin's Structure of Arguments.
