A conceptual assessment model (CAM) for operationalizing constructs in technology-augmented assessments

Abstract

The concept of the “construct” is essential and ubiquitous in the social and psychological sciences, but is often glossed over as being well understood by members of a single community of interest (COI) and not necessarily used uniformly across communities. With the explosive increase in digital augmentation technologies, there is an opportunity, even a necessity, to quantify and possibly standardize what is meant by particular constructs. The opportunity is especially apparent as constructs are “operationalized,” or made measurable through the specification of data elements. We use techniques borrowed from computer science, specifically the Unified Modeling Language (UML), to build a conceptual assessment model (CAM) that can aid in specifying a systematized process of operationalizing constructs. We examine several use cases that can benefit from this approach. We also discuss how we anticipate using the CAM in our program of research into human-machine teaming (HMT) assessments called UMMPIREE.