Georgia State Researchers Receive Federal Funding to Expand Scenario-Based Learning and Assessments

ATLANTA—Researchers at the Educational Testing Service (ETS), an educational testing and assessment company, Georgia State University and the University of Memphis received a $4 million award from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education to expand their work on Scenario-Based Learning and Assessments (SBLAs).

College courses can follow a familiar pattern when it comes to teaching material and assessing students’ knowledge: lecture, lecture, lecture, test. ETS developed the SBLA model as a more engaging, learning-centered way of testing students’ knowledge.

“With SBLAs, you create an authentic problem that students need to solve, and then they work through solutions to that problem as they progress through the assessment,” explained Georgia State Professor Joe Magliano. “There are often characters that introduce the problem and have simulated interactions with the test taker as they’re progressing through it. Students can learn how to think complexly by taking the assessment, and it doesn’t compromise the ability to assess them. Testing isn’t just a mechanism of assessment – it’s a mechanism of learning.”

The same multi-institution research team initially received funding from the U.S Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences’ Transformative Research in the Education Sciences program in 2024 (led by principal investigator John Sabatini from the University of Memphis) to design an artificial intelligence-powered system that allows faculty members to create SBLAs. So far, they have piloted the faculty-developed SBLAs in college writing, introductory psychology and human learning and development courses.

Their newest grant, "Teaching and Learning with AI: Transforming Postsecondary Education with Scenario-Based Tasks" (award number #P116J250806), allows them to test the tool across a wider range of academic coursework and develop professional development for faculty members interested in implementing it.

“We’re going to take it into as many different content areas, disciplines and course modalities as possible. We want to conduct research to understand how SBLAs function, under what circumstances and for whom,” said Associate Professor Jonathan Cohen. “When we implement this in college courses, we learn how it functions in the classroom and then we’re feeding the research we’re doing back into the design of the system. We’re hoping to have something that functions really well and can be tailored to what students need.”

This work also allows faculty members to help students develop AI literacy skills while providing them with meaningful learning experiences.

“What’s most exciting is that this project isn’t just researchers talking to researchers – this one has a very specific focus on working collaboratively with faculty to improve student learning and the student experience, and we’re developing tools to help students learn more richly and deeply,” Cohen said.

The research team includes Zuowei Wang (PI), Patrick Kyllonen (co-PI) and Tenaha O'Reilly (co-PI) from the Educational Testing Service, the lead institution on the project; Cohen (co-PI), Magliano (co-PI), Clinical Associate Professor Omer Ari (investigator) and Professor Gertrude Tinker Sachs (investigator) from Georgia State; and Distinguished Research Professor John Sabatini (co-PI) from the University of Memphis.

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