Validity Considerations in Complex Task Design

Abstract

• Background: With the growth of digital technology has come a desire to measure learning—both formatively and summatively—via complex performance tasks. Such tasks mimic the types of learning environments (whether digital or nondigital) familiar to learners, which is part of their appeal. Designed well, performance tasks present learners with similar affordances and challenges that they face in a non-assessment context, potentially allowing for greater generalizability (Conn et al., 2020). Yet complex and digital performance tasks may present some unique challenges in accumulating the necessary design-based and interpretation-based evidence of validity. In this paper, we discuss some of the measurement challenges and validity considerations associated with complex and digital performance tasks.