The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) has been planned as an ongoing program of assessment. The first cycle of the assessment has involved two "rounds." The first round, which is covered by this report, took place over the period of January 2008-October 2013. The main features of the first cycle of…

Existing e-assessment tools may not be a panacea to address all assessment situations, as students might find the traditional pen-and-paper approach to provide their answers more convenient than typing them online. For example, constructed response or essay-based assessments will require the active participation of students and lecturers to…

This edited volume brings together large-scale research as well as case studies from a range of geographical contexts and represents a variety of educational settings involving second language learners and users. Its aim is to explore the interrelated issues of psychology and technology use in second language learning settings as well as in more…

For the past few years, the authors have been working on the design and development of an online First Certificate in English (FCE) preparatory course and exam simulator in an attempt to provide a supplementary tool and resources for students aiming to achieve a B2 level of English. These materials have been designed in such a way that learners…

In this study, we examined differences in dynamic visual acuity between elite and subelite water polo players and sedentary students. To measure dynamic visual acuity binocularly, we asked participants to indicate the orientation of a broken ring, similar to the Landolt C, which increased in size as it moved across a computer screen. Two different…

Since the Spanish Educational system is changing and promoting the use of online tests, it was necessary to study the transformation of test items in the "Spanish University Entrance Examination" (IB P.A.U.) to diminish the effect of test delivery changes (through its computerization) in order to affect the least the current model. The…

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…

Although there is an increasing number of online tests in the world, little research is currently known in Spain today. Assessment has become an integral part of education and the implications of the various uses of language testing go beyond the educational settings (Douglas, 2010; Fulcher, 2010). This study describes the PAULEX project. This…

Language testing is a relatively new field of interest that has become of common interest in the last twenty years not only for traditional purposes but because of the power that language testing has acquired in relation to immigration and also for its implications for educational reforms. The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical…

Mobile learning permits combining the most motivating elements of online learning. When becoming a supplement to face-to-face education, it is likely to become a most motivating achievement in e-learning. Up to now, little interest and work has been posed in proposing mobile learning as a supporting element for language testing. In this paper, we…

A student conceptual model can be defined as a set of interconnected concepts associated with an estimation value that indicates how well these concepts are used by the students. It can model just one student or a group of students, and can be represented as a concept map, conceptual diagram or one of several other knowledge representation…

This chapter addresses different modalities of assessment, provides an overview of the assessment processes of the basic skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) tested by the Cambridge First Certificate in English (FCE) examination, and explores the ways in which the FCE Online Course and Tester--the resources provided through the…

As the use of mobile learning educational applications has become more common anywhere in the world, new concerns have appeared in the classroom, human interaction in software engineering and ergonomics. new tests of foreign languages for a number of purposes have become more and more common recently. However, studies interrelating language tests…

This paper investigates whether students would be reluctant to do the oral tasks of the Computer Based University Entrance Examination (P.A.U.) in Spain. So far in the Spanish history of education never a foreign language high stakes task has been included in any of the versions of the P.A.U. 60 students took the oral task of the P.A.U. which…

The main requisite for a functional computerized adaptive testing system is the need of a calibrated item bank. This text presents the tasks carried out during the calibration of an item bank for assessing knowledge of Basque language. It has been done in terms of the 3-parameter logistic model provided by the item response theory. Besides, this…