Designing Accessible Formative Assessment Tasks to Measure Argumentation Skills for English Learners

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the challenges and opportunities in developing a computer-delivered English language arts (ELA) task intended to improve the accessibility of the task for middle school English learners (ELs). Data from cognitive labs with 8 ELs with varying language proficiency levels provided rich insight to student–task interaction and how the accessibility of the task could be improved to enhance student understanding and to support valid integration of the task as a part of students' formative assessment process. In this paper, we share the results from our research and discuss our iterative approach to improving ELA task accessibility for ELs' formative assessment process.