Assessment is an integral part of any teaching learning process. Assessment practices have a large number of functions to perform in the context of the teaching learning process. Do contemporary assessment practices perform these function is a critical question to be analysed. In this paper, an attempt has been made to analyse the myths and…

College expansion throughout the twentieth century was accompanied by the growth of a profession centered on supporting student learning and development. Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) programs multiplied across the United States to train these professionals with a focus on administration, leadership, and student affairs. As…

The purpose of higher education is to prepare students to be productive and successful members of society (Huba & Freed, 2000). However, an alarming number of graduates do not possess the skills (i.e., reading writing, and mathematical) required by their employers (Spellings Commission, 2006). Consequently, educators have become increasingly…

We present a data-based perspective concerning recent (e.g., 2008) "Maclean's" magazine rankings of Canadian universities, including cluster analysis of the 2008 data. Canadian universities empirically resemble and relate to each other in a manner different from their formal classification and final rank ordering in the…

This article challenges a number of assumptions underlying marking of student work in British universities. It argues that, in developing rigorous moderation procedures, we have created a huge burden for markers which adds little to accuracy and reliability but creates additional work for staff, constrains assessment choices and slows down…

Learning outcomes have become widely used in higher education, but also misused to the point of being controversial and a bureaucratic burden. This paper distinguishes three kinds of learning outcome found in current literature: (1) those used in individual teaching events; (2) those specified for modules or short courses; and (3) those specified…

This Toolkit forms part of the project entitled "Time for a New Paradigm in Education: Student-Centred Learning" (T4SCL), jointly led by the European Students' Union (ESU) and Education International (EI). This is an EU-funded project under the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP) administered by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture…

The 11th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2018) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Templeton Landing in Buffalo, New York. This year's EDM conference was highly competitive, with 145 long and short paper submissions. Of these, 23 were accepted as full papers and 37…

The value of qualitative assessment approaches has been underestimated primarily because they are often juxtaposed against long-standing quantitative traditions and the widely accepted premise that the best research produces generalizable and statistically significant findings. Institutional researchers avoid qualitative methods for at least three…

Points out the important use of textbooks and their ancillary resources in lower-division chemistry courses and the scientific misconceptions found in them. Introduces the TextRev Project which is a new resource for data collection and analysis. Investigates how first and second year chemistry students use and value their textbooks and their study…

Presents the perspective of a science teacher educator on evaluation systems for courses and faculty. Critiques the traditional university course evaluation instrument and offers suggestions for augmentation. (DDR)

Identifies and quantifies the chemistry conceptions used by students when solving chemical equilibrium problems requiring application of LeChatelier's Principle, and explores the feasibility of designing a paper and pencil test to accomplish these purposes. Eleven prevalent incorrect student conceptions about chemical equilibrium were identified…