As COVID-19 spread in early 2020, a lockdown was implemented across Canadian provinces and territories, resulting in the shuttering of physical post-secondary campuses. Universities quickly pivoted to remote learning, and faculty members adjusted their instructional and assessment approaches to align with virtual environments. Presumably to aid…

The Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program (CELPIP) Test was designed for immigration and citizenship in Canada. CELPIP is a computer-based English-language proficiency test which covers all four skills. This test review provides a description of the test and its construct, tasks, and delivery. Then, it appraises CELPIP for…

As the world reeled from the realization that a pandemic of a magnitude not seen in a century was upon us, and that physical distancing to reduce the speed of transmission was going to necessitate suspension of regular classes, university faculty members scrambled to convert their planned lectures from in-person to online formats. This article…

Learning management systems (LMS) allow for a variety of ways in which online multiple-choice assessments ("tests") can be configured, including the ability to allow for multiple attempts and options for which of and how the attempts will count. These options are usually chosen according to the instinct of the instructor; however, LMS…

Flexible Learning (FL) is a pedagogical approach allowing for flexibility of time, place, and audience, including but not solely focused on the use of technologies. We describe Flexible Learning as a pedagogical approach in four courses framed by three key themes: 1) objectives and aspects of course design, 2) evaluation and assessment, and 3)…

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a system of international assessments that allows countries to compare outcomes of learning as students near the end of compulsory schooling. PISA core assessments measure the performance of 15-year-old students in mathematics, science, and reading literacy every 3 years. Coordinated by…

This article presents a review of the Children's Organizational Skills Scales (COSS) which were designed to assess how children organize their time, materials, and actions to accomplish important tasks at home and school. The scale quantifies children's skills in organization, time management, and planning (OTMP). The COSS is a multi-informant…

We examined web-based ratings and open-ended comments of teaching-award winners (n = 120) and research-award winners (n = 119) to determine if teaching-award winners received more favourable ratings and comments on RateMyProfessors.com. As predicted, students rated teaching-award winners higher than research-award winners on measures of teaching…

A formative computer-based assessment (CBA) was one of three instruments used for assessment in a Bachelor of Education course at Queen's University (Ontario, Canada) with an enrolment of approximately 700 students. The formative framework fostered a self-regulated learning environment whereby feedback on the CBA was used to support rather than…

Criteria had been proposed for assessing the severity of possible test security violations for computerized tests with high-stakes outcomes. However, these criteria resulted from theoretical derivations that assumed uniformly randomized item selection. This study investigated potential damage caused by organized item theft in computerized adaptive…

This paper discusses the relative advantage offered by online Students' Evaluations of Teaching (SET) and describes a study conducted at a Canadian university to identify critical success factors of online evaluations from students' point of view. Factors identified as important by the students include anonymity, ease of use (of both SET survey…

In this article, the author reviews the TOEFL iBT which is the latest version of the TOEFL, whose history stretches back to 1961. The TOEFL iBT was introduced in the USA, Canada, France, Germany and Italy in late 2005. Currently the TOEFL test is offered in two testing formats: (1) Internet-based testing (iBT); and (2) paper-based testing (PBT).…

Assessment has long been at the center of education policy debates, and for good reason. The goal of schooling is to maximize student learning, and assessments provide a picture of what students know and are able to do. Assessments also have a strong influence on what goes on in classrooms. The United States is now poised to make the most dramatic…

One attempt to make scores from large-scale assessments more interpretable has been to provide proficiency level scores to describe the meaning of student performance on tests. This study has examined the accuracy of Ercikan and Julian's (2002) guidelines for developing proficiency level scores and the classification accuracy of proficiency level…

Published papers on the area of online assessment have mainly focused on instructors' assessment of online discussion forums or computer-assisted testing in a highly structured environment with a narrow focus on multiple choice or true-false types of questions. With the exponential growth of online courses and many educational institutions looking…