This volume offers an expansion of ideas presented at a recent conference convened to identify the major strategies and more promising practices for assessing technology. The authors -- representing government, business, and university sectors -- helped to set the boundaries of present technology assessment by offering perspectives from computer science, cognitive and military psychology, and education. Their work explores both the use of techniques to assess technology and the use of technology to facilitate the assessment process.
The book's main purpose is to portray the state of the art in technology assessment and to provide conceptual options to help readers understand the power of technology. Technological innovation will continue to develop its own standards of practice and effectiveness. To the extent that these practices are empirically based, designers, supporters, and consumers will be given better information for their decisions.

This volume explores the application of computer simulation technology to measurement issues in education -- especially as it pertains to problem based learning. Whereas most assessments related to problem solving are based on expensive and time consuming measures (i.e., think-aloud protocols or performance assessments that require extensive human rater scoring), this book relies on computerization of the major portion of the administration, scoring, and reporting of problem-solving assessments. It is appropriate for researchers, instructors and graduate students in educational assessment, educational technology, and educational psychology.

This volume explores the application of computer simulation technology to measurement issues in education -- especially as it pertains to problem based learning. Whereas most assessments related to problem solving are based on expensive and time consuming measures (i.e., think-aloud protocols or performance assessments that require extensive human rater scoring), this book relies on computerization of the major portion of the administration, scoring, and reporting of problem-solving assessments. It is appropriate for researchers, instructors and graduate students in educational assessment, educational technology, and educational psychology.

This volume presents a variety of overall assessments of technology and individual descriptions of work-in-progress. Supported by private funders, non-profit organizations, government agencies, and a variety of other sources, these efforts address education programs focused on specific subject matter such as mathematics or troubleshooting of school-based learning using computers. They also focus on classes of technology such as intelligent systems, distance learning, and hypertext. Taken together, they portray the range of strategies through which we can begin to understand the impact of educational technology in the future. In addition, they illustrate different approaches currently adopted by technology designers to place and explain their work in a larger context.
Each of the chapters presents a different point of entry on the technology assessment problem. Even those nominally focused on a single implementation, such as testing or teacher observation, demonstrate the clear interest by their authors in the larger implications of their work.