The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) documents dimensions of quality in undergraduate education and provides information and assistance to colleges, universities, and other organizations to improve student learning. Its primary activity is annually surveying college students to assess the extent to which they engage in educational…

Effects of two feedback conditions--comment and no comment--on the motivation of sixth grade students to continue with computer assisted instruction (CAI) were investigated, and results for boys and for girls were compared. Subjects were 62 students--29 boys and 33 girls--from a suburban elementary school who were randomly assigned to the comment…

First-year algebra high school students of various ability levels were presented lessons concerning the application of geometry theorems. The lessons varied in terms of the complexity of the examples that were shown. After the lessons, students completed a questionnaire concerning their perceptions of the lessons, and then they were tested over…

The study investigated which addition facts children and preservice teachers view as being difficult, whether it is possible to determine facts which are difficult for all children, and whether children and adults agree on which facts are difficult. Results indicated that children and adults disagree about the difficulty of facts. (PK)

Describes study that investigated the effects of medium of instructional practice, task difficulty, and gender on continuing motivation. Microcomputers and paper and pencil format were compared on tasks at a hard or easy difficulty level with fifth and sixth grade students, and questionnaires were used to determine student attitudes. (Author/LRW)

This study investigated the effects of medium of instruction, task difficulty, and gender on continuing motivation. A total of 139 fifth and sixth graders with previous computer experience completed an initial learning task in one of the two media formats (computer or paper/pencil) and under either a hard or easy difficulty level. Students' choice…

Test scores were compared for two types of objective achievement tests--multiple choice tests and the recently developed Multi-Digit Test (MDT) procedure. MDT is an approximation of the fill-in-the-blank technique. Students select their answers from long lists of alphabetized terms, with each answer corresponding to a number from 001 to 999. The…

Three questions concerning the Binary Search Method (BSM) of computerized adaptive testing were studied: (1) whether it provided a reliable and valid estimation of examinee ability; (2) its effect on examinee attitudes toward computerized adaptive testing and conventional paper-and-pencil testing; and (3) the relationship between item response…