Tabular presentations of student data often hide information about the switches in responses by individual students over the course of a semester. We extend unpublished work by Kanim on "escalator diagrams," which show changes in student responses from correct to incorrect (and vice versa) while representing pre- and postinstruction…

Data visualization is the term used to describe the methods and technologies used to allow the exploration and communication of quantitative information graphically. Data visualization is a rapidly growing and evolving discipline, and visualizations are widely used to cover politics. Yet, while popular and scholarly publications widely use…

Open book assessment is not a new idea, but it does not seem to have gained ground in higher education. In particular, not much literature is available on open book examinations in mathematics and statistics in higher education. The objective of this paper is to investigate the appropriateness of open book assessments in a first-year business…

Data-based decision making is all the rage. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (2009) has emphatically declared, "I am a deep believer in the power of data to drive our decisions. Data gives us the roadmap to reform. It tells us where we are, where we need to go, and who is most at risk." In the past few years, all 50 states have adopted most or…

Background/Context: Principles of evidential reasoning have often been discussed in the context of educational and psychological measurement with respect to construct validity and validity arguments. More recently, Mislevy proposed the metaphor of assessment as an evidentiary argument about students' learning and abilities given their…

A study was conducted in 26 Head Start classrooms with 264 children to compare the effect of a read aloud plus extension activities intervention over a control group to the effect of a read aloud only intervention over a control group on preschool children's vocabulary. Children were assessed before and after the intervention on target vocabulary…

The New York Performance Standards Consortium includes urban public high schools that have successfully used a performance-based assessment option. Instead of exit exams, student assessments are based on specific performance-based assessment tasks. These schools have shown that it is possible to use qualitative data to make substantive decisions…

Written comments on student evaluations often seem idiosyncratic, lacking the power of numerical statistical data. These statements, however, may sometimes reveal intellectual challenges common to novice learners in our disciplines. Instructors can use these insights as part of a scholarly approach to teaching, making meaningful adjustments to…

This study examined the relationship between oral reading fluency and performance on a statewide reading test across Grades 3, 4, and 5. A curriculum-based measure of oral reading fluency was administered to 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders who participated in the reading test from the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP). A cross-sectional design…

This paper describes an application of Computer Assisted Instruction named 'genpbs' consisting of five modules of preliminary instruction and 19 modules of problems for students in an introductory genetics course. Each problem module consists of an average of 14 problems arranged in increasing level of difficulty. The program also contains a…

Teachers' conceptions of assessment can be understood in terms of their agreement or disagreement with four purposes to which assessment may be put, specifically, (a) improvement of teaching and learning, (b) school accountability, (c) student accountability, or (d) treating assessment as irrelevant. A 50-item Teachers' Conceptions of Assessment…

The appropriate analysis of students' responses to an assessment is an essential step in improving the quality of the assessment itself as well as staff teaching and student learning. Many academics are unfamiliar with the formal processes used to analyze assessment results; the standard statistical methods associated with analyzing the validity…

Reports on a statistics course designed to emphasize real-world applications. The course is primarily lab-based and provides students with numerous opportunities to demonstrate mastery of their skills. The instruction is tightly focused on achievable goals and utilizes hands-on experience and computer tutorials. (MJP)