Conceptual Foundations of Test Illustration Design

• In Event: 66.049 - Designing Illustrations Glossaries for Special Populations in a National Large-Scale Mathematics Assessment

Abstract

Illustrations hold great promise as resources for supporting students in understanding certain constituents (e.g., words, terms, expressions) of the text of test items that are not relevant to the constructs being measured yet may pose unnecessary linguistic challenges. By providing visual representations of those challenging textual constituents, illustrations are intended to support students in gaining access to the items’ content, thus contributing to valid, fair testing. In computer-administered testing, available information technology allows maximization of the potential of illustrations as accessibility resources, as they are sensitive to each individual’s set of specific needs. A student clicks on the constituent for which he or she needs support; then a static image that represents that constituent pops in on the screen, next to the constituent.
This presentation will discuss the conceptual foundation for designing illustrations as accessibility resources in the testing of English learners (ELs) and deaf/hard of hearing (D/HH) students—very different student populations who share the condition that English is their second language. The need for conceptual work in this field stems from the fact that research on illustrations in education, and especially in assessment, is scant. While, in principle, the notion of adding illustrations to text is simple, available literature does not provide much knowledge that allows systematic generation of illustrations.
Three perspectives critical to designing illustrations will be discussed: linguistic, semiotic, and cognitive. The linguistic perspective allows identification of constituents that are most likely to be challenging to the target students. Due to the linguistic heterogeneity of both EL and D/HH populations, constituents cannot be assumed to be equally challenging to all students. The linguistic perspective also allows identification of illustratable constituents (e.g., concrete objects or actions, as opposed to abstract ideas that are difficult to represent in static images) and illustrated allowable constituents—those that are not part of the knowledge being assessed.
The semiotic perspective addresses the relationship of image and text, which are treated as interacting modalities. There is evidence that, while illustrations can support students in making sense of the text of items, students also use the text of items to make sense of the illustrations. Thus, making the correspondence between constituents and their illustrations evident to students is key to ensuring effective support.
The cognitive perspective addresses the fact that information provided in two modalities (i.e., visual and textual) increases the cognitive load of test items. While illustrations can help students in gaining access to the content of items, unnecessarily complex illustrations can be distracting and unduly increase their cognitive demand.
The presentation will discuss how, used in combination, these three perspectives have enabled us to identify a set of parameters critical to designing test item illustrations according to the characteristics of the target students, the assessment goals, and the practical constraints. These design parameters involve, among many other, features such as size, style, perspective, zooming, black/gray-scale tone, and background. The presentation will provide examples of the use of these design parameters.

Author

• Guillermo Solano-Flores, Stanford University