Purposes: This study uses think-alouds and cognitive interviews to provide validity evidence for an online formative assessment--i-Ready Standards Mastery (iSM) mini-assessments--which involves a heavy use of innovative items. iSM mini-assessments are intended to help teachers determine student understanding of each of the on-grade-level Common…

Serious games foster the acquisition of complex problem-solving skills. Assessment of such skills should be in line with instruction, and within a serious game environment its content validity should equal face-to-face assessment. Research on assessment in serious gaming has remained rather scarce. This article shows how assessment can be…

With the rapid advances in computer technology during recent years, researchers have demonstrated the pivotal influences of computer-assisted diagnostic systems on student learning performance improvement. This research aims to develop a Diagnostic and Remedial Learning System (DRLS) for an algebra course in a Thai lower secondary school context…

In Hong Kong, onscreen marking (OSM) is superseding paper-based marking (PBM) across the entire national examinations system. This paper describes a qualitative study of the attitudes of Liberal Studies markers towards OSM. This becomes a compulsory subject in Hong Kong's new senior secondary school curriculum to be first examined in 2012, with a…

The potential use of computer-based assessments has raised concerns from educators, policymakers, and parents about information technology infrastructure in school districts and the preparation of staff and students to use new technologies for assessment purposes, and the potential impact of testing activities on core school functions,…

Pedagogic Conversational Agents are computer applications that can interact with students in natural language. They have been used with satisfactory results on the instruction of several domains. The authors believe that they could also be useful for the instruction of Secondary Physics and Chemistry Education. Therefore, in this paper, the…

This paper reports the results of a descriptive study on the use of a technology-enhanced formative assessment system called Accelerated Math (AM) for ELLs and their native-English-speaking (NES) peers. It was comprised of analyses of an extant database of 18,549 students, including 2,057 ELLs, from grades 1 through 8 across 30 U.S. states. These…

Critical thinking is a skill that school systems are trying to develop in their student populations. Numerous studies have been conducted on developing critical thinking skills such as self-regulation, interpretation, and analysis. However, available data on the use of learning management systems (LMS) as a means to develop critical-thinking…

Motivation in distance education (DE) has been studied mostly at the postsecondary level with few studies having been conducted at the high-school level. This paper breaks with this tradition by reporting on the perspectives on motivation of 42 Canadian high-school DE teachers. Data collection involved one-hour long, semi-structured telephone…

Over the last two decades there has been an increase in the use of qualitative research, particularly in the human sciences. Such a move has resulted in an increasing number of researchers across disciplines using various types of qualitative software specially designed for managing text and facilitating analysis of qualitative data. However, we…

This article reports the development, validation and use of a survey for assessing students' perceptions of their e-learning environments. The Online Learning Environment Survey (OLES) was administered to 325 students, 131 in Australia and 194 in Hong Kong. The data were analysed to examine 1) the reliability and validity of the survey, 2)…