The acquisition of teacher digital competence is a key aspect in the initial training of teachers. However, most existing evaluation instruments do not provide sufficient evidence of this teaching competence. In this study, we describe the design and development process of a three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment for evaluating the teacher…

Increased use of course management software to administer course exams online for face-to-face classes raises the question of how well test anxiety and other emotions generalize from the classroom to an online setting. We hypothesized that administering regular course exams in an online format would reduce test anxiety experienced at the time of…

Questionnaire instruments are routinely translated to digital administration systems; however, few studies have compared the differential effects of these administrative methods, and fewer yet in authentic contexts-of-use. In this study, 326 university students were randomly assigned to one of two administration conditions, paper-based (PBA) or…

Educational researchers have "rarely" addressed the problem of how to provide feedback on constructed responses. All participants (N = 76) read a story and completed short-answer questions based on the text, with some receiving feedback consisting of the exact material on which the questions were based. During feedback, two groups receiving…

Within the field of education, there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of formative assessment and of structural knowledge. In an effort to fill needs in each of these areas, this article describes an innovative feedback strategy intended to improve students' structural knowledge. Twenty-four high school physics students were…

This study explores the efforts at Brigham Young University to improve preservice candidates' technology integration using the Teacher Work Sample (TWS) as an assessment tool. Baseline data that was analyzed from 95 TWSs indicated that students were predominantly using technology for productivity and information presentation purposes even though…

Describes Apex (Assistant for Preparing Exams), a tool for evaluating student essays based on their content. By comparing an essay and the text of a given course on a semantic basis, the system can measure how well the essay matches the text. Various assessments are presented to the student regarding the topic, outline, and coherence of the essay.…

This proof-of-concept investigation describes a computer-based approach for deriving the knowledge structure of individuals and of groups from their written essays, and considers the convergent criterion-related validity of the computer-based scores relative to human rater essay scores and multiple-choice test scores. After completing a…