This study employed a mixed-methods approach to examine how rater performance develops during a semester-long rater certification program for an English as a Second Language (ESL) writing placement test at a large US university. From 2016 to 2018, we tracked three groups of novice raters (n = 30) across four rounds in the certification program.…

Purpose: The goal of the study was to test an intervention using a brief essay as an instrument for evaluating higher-order information literacy skills in college students, while accounting for prior conditions such as socioeconomic status and prior academic achievement, and identify other predictors of information literacy through an evaluation…

This study examined test takers' perception of assessment demand and its impact on the measurement of intended constructs. More than 800 test takers took a pre- and a posttest of College English Test Band 4 and filled in a perception questionnaire to report the skills they perceive as necessary for answering the test. The study found test takers…

Large-scale writing programs can add value to the traditional timed writing assessment by using aspects of the essays to assess the effectiveness of institutional goals, programs, and curriculums. The "six learning goals" prompt in this study represents an attempt to provide an accurate writing assessment that moves beyond scores. This…

e-Learning has some restrictions on how learning performance is assessed. Online testing is usually in the form of multiple-choice questions, without any essay type of learning assessment. Major reasons for employing multiple-choice tasks in e-learning include ease of implementation and ease of managing learner's responses. To address this…

In 1795 America's preeminent scholarly organization sponsored a contest for the best essay on education. The two winners have been canonized in the scholarship on early American educational thought. This essay refocuses attention on the great contest itself, not only seeking understanding of the works that it produced but also analyzing its…

This paper reports the findings of an attempt to improve test-wiseness (TW) through direct instruction in selected test-taking strategies. TW was defined as "a cognitive function, subject to improvement through both general exposure to a wide variety of test items, and specific training in test-taking skills." The total investigation included:…

Promoting collaboration skills and dispositions is widely encouraged currently in the field of teacher preparation. However, very few university classrooms incorporate collaboration into their assessment practices. One factor may be the perceived potential lack of soundness of such methodologies. This study is a qualitative examination of the…

The Florida Writing Enhancement Program, for all tenth through twelfth grade students, as implemented in the Hillsborough County Public Schools, was evaluated. The program was designed to improve students' writing in the areas of composition, sentence formation, usage, and mechanics. This evaluation was conducted to determine whether the program…

In 1989, a study was conducted within the Minnesota Community College System to determine the effects of a 3-year Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) staff development program on the quality of student writing and on student mastery of course objectives. The study methods included faculty interviews, student and faculty surveys, holistic ratings…