As the international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) become more popular, policy makers and education practitioners are interested in collecting as much student background information as possible to better understand the learning context of their students. To collect such abundant information, administrators need to develop a lot of questions.…

We begin by defining the concept of "open" Markov processes, which are continuous-time Markov chains where probability can flow in and out through certain "boundary" states. We study open Markov processes which in the absence of such boundary flows admit equilibrium states satisfying detailed balance, meaning that the net flow…

This dissertation is composed of a study of estimation methods in classical and test theories and the elaboration and application of a cluster-robust variance estimator. Variance estimators derived from generalized estimating equations are known to be robust to most covariance structures and are therefore well suited for psychometric analysis of…

Skill acquisition theorists conceptualize second language (L2) learning as the acquisition of a set of perceptual, cognitive, and motor skills. The dominant view in skill acquisition theory is to regard L2 skill acquisition as a three-stage process "from initial representation of knowledge through initial changes in behavior to eventual…

Student misconceptions have been studied for decades from a curricular/instructional perspective and from the assessment/test level perspective. Numerous misconception assessment tools have been developed in order to measure students' misconceptions relative to the correct content. Often, these tools are used to make a variety of educational…

Video compression and communication has been an important field over the past decades and critical for many applications, e.g., video on demand, video-conferencing, and remote education. In many applications, providing low-delay and error-resilient video transmission and increasing the coding efficiency are two major challenges. Low-delay and…

The future of education is human expertise and artificial intelligence working in conjunction, a revolution that will change the education as we know it. The Intelligent Tutoring System is a key component of this future. A quantitative measurement of efficacies of practice to heterogeneous learners is the cornerstone of building an effective…

Terrorism is a complex and evolving phenomenon. In the past few decades, we have witnessed an increase in the number of terrorist incidents in the world. The security and stability of many countries is threatened by terrorist groups. Perpetrators now use sophisticated weapons and the attacks are more and more lethal. Currently, terrorist incidents…

The dissertation explored the efficacy of using a POMDP to select and apply appropriate instruction. POMDPs are a tool for planning: selecting a sequence of actions that will lead to an optimal outcome. RTI is an approach to instruction, where teachers craft individual plans for students based on the results of screening test. The goal is to…

This dissertation investigates the statistical properties present within corpora of common practice music, involving a data set of more than 8,000 works spanning from 1650 to 1900, and focusing specifically on the properties of the chord progressions contained therein. In the first chapter, methodologies concerning corpus analysis are presented…

Item response theory (IRT) has gained an increasing popularity in large-scale educational and psychological testing situations because of its theoretical advantages over classical test theory. Unidimensional graded response models (GRMs) are useful when polytomous response items are designed to measure a unified latent trait. They are limited in…

Different estimation procedures have been developed for the unidimensional three-parameter item response theory (IRT) model. These techniques include the marginal maximum likelihood estimation, the fully Bayesian estimation using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation techniques, and the Metropolis-Hastings Robbin-Monro estimation. With each…

Item response theory (IRT) uses a family of statistical models for estimating stable characteristics of items and examinees and defining how these characteristics interact in describing item and test performance. With a focus on the three-parameter logistic IRT (Birnbaum, 1968; Lord, 1980) model, the current study examines the accuracy and…

Diagnostic classification models (DCMs) are structured latent class models widely discussed in the field of psychometrics. They model subjects' underlying attribute patterns and classify subjects into unobservable groups based on their mastery of attributes required to answer the items correctly. The effective implementation of DCMs depends…

This dissertation uses design science research and engineering to develop a cloud-based simulator for modeling next-generation cybersecurity protection frameworks in the United States. The claim is made that an agile and neutral framework extending throughout the cyber-threat plane is needed for critical infrastructure protection (CIP). This…