We present the design, statistical analysis, and validation of a questionnaire to assess students' knowledge about basic aspects of quantum mechanics (QM). The QM evaluation (QME) is a true-false and multiple-choice mixed questionnaire that features 10 two-tier items spanning three relevant themes in quantum mechanics: wave behavior of matter,…

In the present set of experiments, we systematically examined the processes that occur while reading texts designed to refute and explain commonsense beliefs that reside in readers' long-term memory. In Experiment 1 (n = 36), providing readers with a refutation-plus-explanation of a commonsense belief was sufficient to significantly reduce…

This study examined how science teachers' knowledge of research methods, neuroscience and drug addiction changed through their participation in a 5-day summer science institute. The data for this study evolved from a four-year NIH funded science education project called Addiction Research and Investigation for Science Educators (ARISE). Findings…

This study investigated the effects of two different true-false questions on memory awareness and long-term retention of knowledge. Participants took four subsequent knowledge tests on curriculum learning material that they studied at different retention intervals prior to the start of this study (i.e. prior to the first test). At the first and…

While today's curriculum is largely driven by standards, many teachers find the lack of specificity in the standards to be confounding and even intimidating. Now this practical book provides middle and high school teachers with explicit guidance on designing specific objectives and developing appropriate formative and summative assessments to…

Two basic issues are discussed that involve the Carver model of the relationship between test score and knowledge. The first of these concerns different types of tests which have different probabilities of obtaining the correct answer due to guessing. A derivation is shown which places different test types "on-a-par"--meaning that two tests are…

Seven formulas for scoring test items with two options (true-false or multiple choice with only two choices) were investigated. Several conditions, such as varying directions for guessing and whether testees had prior knowledge of the proportions of false items on the test were also investigated. (Author/JKS)

Computer aided assessment (CAA) tools are more and more widely adopted in academic environments mixed to other assessment means. In this article, we present a CAA Web application, named eWorkbook, which can be used for evaluating learner's knowledge by creating (the tutor) and taking (the learner) on-line tests based on multiple choice, multiple…

A new approach to the development of the item characteristic curve (ICC), which expresses the functional relationship between the level of performance on a given task and an independent variable that is relevant to the task, is presented. The approach focuses on knowledge states, decision processes, and other circumstances underlying responses to…

Test scores were compared for two types of objective achievement tests--multiple choice tests and the recently developed Multi-Digit Test (MDT) procedure. MDT is an approximation of the fill-in-the-blank technique. Students select their answers from long lists of alphabetized terms, with each answer corresponding to a number from 001 to 999. The…