July 2020

Division H Invited VP Session:

“Best Practices in Assessment in the Context of Distance Learning”

Dear Division H members and friends,

We write to invite you to consider sending a submission to participate in a Division H invited Vice Presidential session. The provision title of the session is “Best Practices in Assessment in the Context of Distance Learning.”

As we all know and have been living, the outbreak of the coronavirus has shuttered most public and private schools in the U.S. and around the world. As a result, both learning and assessment have moved online, with little to no preparation for most educators. The purpose of this invited session will be to share best practices in assessment in an online environment. We are interested in learning from our members’ experiences during the last few months, what you are planning for the coming year, and what existing research has to say about assessment in the context of distance learning. In particular, we invite submissions that attend to the following issues and address the following questions:

1. What are examples of good online assessment practices at the school and district levels?
2. How might state and district policy need to be flexible to support best practices in online assessment?
3. What are the challenges to equitable assessment in the context of distance learning, and how can we mitigate them?
4. What are online assessment practices that schools and districts implemented in the spring of 2020? Which worked, and why? What were the challenges that educators faced, and what was done to address those challenges?
5. What are schools, districts, and state agencies planning to do for online assessment during the 2020-2021 school year?

By addressing these questions, Division H seeks to contribute to the theme of the 2021 annual meeting, “Accepting Educational Responsibility,” which calls on us as scholars and citizens to engage in research that can have a direct impact on practice.

We are planning for this session to be a symposium that will showcase a mix of presenters from schools, districts, state education agencies, assessment and research and evaluation companies/nonprofits, and university-based researchers. We welcome submissions from our international and U.S.-based members.

We are looking to accept five submissions. All submissions should follow AERA’s submission guidelines and should be submitted by July 22, 2020 to the Division H program chair (see below).

Submissions will be reviewed by the Program Committee, the Diversity and Inclusion chair, members of the International Committee, and the Division H Vice President.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to the Division H program co-chairs:

• Virginia Snodgrass Rangel ( vrangel3@uh.edu)
• Matt Lavery ( mlavery@bgsu.edu)

We look forward to reading your submissions!

Be well,

Brad