SPICE curriculum formative assessments: Rules Task, Debugging Task, and Engineering Task with cross-domain rubrics

Design · All designs
Evidence · no claims cited

Description

SPICE (Science Projects Integrating Computing and Engineering) is "a three-week middle school curriculum unit in which students redesign a schoolyard using surface materials that minimize post-rainstorm runoff while satisfyingdesignconstraints(e.g.,cost,accessibility)." Within it, three formative assessments were scored by CoTAL: a Rules Task with a nine-subscore categorical rubric expressing rainfall-absorption-runoff conditionals, a Debugging Task with five subscores for identifying errors in a fictional classmate's block-based code, and an Engineering Task scored 0-4 on recognizing unfair design comparisons due to differing rainfall inputs. Rubrics explicitly tag science (SCI), computing (COM), and engineering (ENG) domains.

Design Implications

Context

Requirements

• Assessments and rubrics developed through ECD-aligned participatory design between teachers and researchers, targeting NGSS performance expectations

Constraints

• The Engineering Task rubric is a single 0-4 multi-class score, unlike the multi-label subscore rubrics of the other two tasks

Target Learners

• Upper elementary and middle school students in Earth science and engineering design

Learning Goals

• Cross-domain conceptual knowledge connecting science, computing, and engineering, including conservation of matter, conditional logic, debugging computational models, and fair tests

Claims

Related Designs

• Eight-week MI module sequence with assignments and compact assessment rubric
• Luminous Science Transdisciplinary Curriculum

Examples

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Key Sources

• Cohn, C., Ashwin T S, Mohammed, N., & Biswas, G. (2026). CoTAL: Human-in-the-Loop Prompt Engineering for Generalizable Formative Assessment Scoring and Feedback. arXiv preprint. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.02323. doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.02323

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	design
id	spice-formative-assessments-rules-debugging-engineering
title	SPICE curriculum formative assessments: Rules Task, Debugging Task, and Engineering Task with cross-domain rubrics
description	SPICE (Science Projects Integrating Computing and Engineering) is "a three-week middle school curriculum unit in which students redesign a schoolyard using surface materials that minimize post-rainstorm runoff while s...
status	review
generated	by process:settle-candidates on 2026-10-10
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	1 — cohn-2026

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