Data-Driven Innovation (DDI) benefits all sectors of our economy, increases efficiency, saves money and resources, and improves quality of life. From safety and security, to the environment and infrastructure, to health and education, the opportunities for DDI to improve our lives are boundless. In SIIA’s whitepaper, Data-Driven Innovation A Guide for Policymakers: Understanding and Enabling the Economic and Social Value of Data, we explored the ways our member companies are leveraging data to provide cutting edge solutions. Here’s one case study, from Pearson:
Today, we’re in the digital ocean. We can gather information about students’ daily learning activities and interactions with content as they happen in computer-based instruction. The increase of technology-based learning in schools enables us to have all students doing meaningful activity on digital devices. Computers now allow us to capture all kinds of data about what students do as they interact with learning material, seamlessly recorded as they go about their daily learning activity. These interactions can produce an “ocean” of data that, if used correctly, can give us a completely different view of how students progress in acquiring knowledge, skills, and attributes.
This ability to capture data from everyday student learning activity should fundamentally change how we think about assessment.
Invisible assessments allow us to gather information much more frequently without interrupting the flow of instruction, hence the term “invisible.” This lets us provide teachers, students, and parents with feedback about progress immediately and in time to make adjustments to teaching and learning. It also eliminates the common complaint about the heavy time requirements of traditional assessment.
By capturing many, many observations of a student’s learning activity over time, we are able to build models of student learning and proficiency without the pressure of performance on a single test.
David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy. Follow the SIIA public policy team on Twitter at @SIIAPubPolicy.