Evidence-Centered Design for Simulation-Based Assessment

Simulations provide opportunities for people to learn and to develop skills for situations that are expensive, time-consuming, or dangerous. Careful design can support their learning by tailoring the features of situations to their levels of skill, allowing repeated attempts, and providing timely feedback. The same environments provide opportunities for assessing people's capabilities to act in these situations. This article describes an assessment design framework that can help projects develop effective simulation-based assessments. It reviews the rationale and terminology of the “evidence-centered” assessment design framework, discusses how it aligns with the principles of simulation design, and illustrates ideas with examples from engineering and medicine. Advice is offered for designing a new simulation-based assessment and for adapting an existing simulation system for assessment purposes.