Chapter 14: Collaborative Versus Individual Digital Assessments

Changes in the economic context within which today’s students will function as adults have increased the value of perennial skills such as collaborative and communication skills (Binkley et al., 2009; Dede, 2010; Levy & Murnane, 2004). Today, proficiency in collaborative problem solving is requisite for success in both school and work (O’Neil & Chuang, 2008). At the same time, structuring assessments that evaluate attainment of these skills in 21st century education, specifically collaboration or teamwork, is challenging. When using collaborative assessments, important issues to consider are how to assign credit to each group member and how to account for differences across groups that may bias a given student’s performance. This chapter addresses these challenges as well as discusses inappropriate, yet common, implementation of collaborative techniques and preliminary research on applications of cognitive load theory (CLT) to task selection procedures for individual versus collaborative assessments (Hansen & Zapata-Rivera, 2010; Kirschner, Paas, & Kirschner, 2008). We conclude by proposing a framework for structuring both collaborative and individual digital assessments to facilitate collaborative skill in line with 21st century educational objectives.