New CIRCLE Working Paper Examines Civics, Digital Badges and Alternative Assessments

With support from the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, CIRCLE recently published “New and Alternative Assessments, Digital Badges, and Civics: An Overview of Emerging Themes and Promising Directions,” which explores digital badges and alternative assessments for civic skills, knowledge, and dispositions. This working paper also considers ePortfolios, rubrics, games, simulations, and other assessment and learning tools that might expand options for those committed to improving civic education.

States are, to a greater extent, using multiple-choice-only tests that focus primarily on memorizing information, rather than demonstrating civic skills. Furthermore, assessments focus mostly on the history and geography of the United States; far fewer states assess students in world affairs or economics. Are we preparing and assessing students to be engaged citizens?

We explore this question and the broader landscape of alternative assessments, here, in an online presentation.

Registration Open for 2013 Frontiers of Democracy Conference

Do you work on or think about issues around public engagement, deliberative and participatory democracy, collaborative governance, educating for democracy and civic learning, public work, building social capital or any form of strengthening democracy?

Join us at the Frontiers of Democracy conference, sponsored by Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University, the Democracy Imperative, and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. Learn more about the conference and register here.

CIRCLE Evaluations Explore Interventions on Combating Polarization and Fear-Mongering in Politics

During the 2012 election, the Democracy Fund invested in a wide range of experiments to improve the quality of public discourse and to combat polarization and fear-mongering in politics. The Democracy Fund asked CIRCLE to evaluate six of these interventions and to share what we learned with the grantees and the field. Most of our evaluations are now complete, and we will disseminate the findings of broadest interest this spring. The grantees were the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Blogginghead.tv, The Center for Public Integrity, The Columbia Journalism Review, George Washington University and AmericaSpeaks, and the Healthy Democracy Fund’s Citizens Initiative Review.

You can find more information on CIRCLE’s evaluation services on our website.