Assessment and collaborative inquiry: A review of assessment-based interventions in technology-enhanced K-14 education

We provide a conceptual review of the research on assessment in technology-enhanced collaborative inquiry in K-14 education, published between 1994 and 2013. The 57 studies that satisfied our search criteria were coded using a framework that considered the nature of the assessment intervention, the purposes of the assessment intervention, and the role of technology in student learning. This allowed us to identify four types of assessment interventions. The findings indicated that only interventions in the immersion orientation seemed to help students learn how to learn. Such assessment practices enabled students to learn actively and to learn both disciplinary substance and metacognitive/regulative skills. However, relatively few studies clearly integrated assessment and learning. The main contributions of this study are the coding framework and the four patterns of assessment interventions. Together, they provide a new way of thinking about the design of practice. The review provides guidance for the shift of assessment practice to scaffold learning of this field.