A problem faced by many instructors is that of designing exams that accurately assess the abilities of the students. Typically, these exams are prepared several days in advance, and generic question scores are used based on rough approximation of the question difficulty and length. For example, for a recent class taught by the author, there were…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of constructivism on assessment approach, where the type of question (true or false, multiple-choice, calculation or essay) is used productively. Although the student's approach to learning and the teacher's approach to teaching are concepts that have been widely researched, few…

Do preschool children appreciate numerical value as an abstract property of a set of objects? We tested the influence of stimulus features such as size, shape, and color on preschool children's developing nonverbal numerical abilities. Children between 3 and 5 years of age were tested on their ability to estimate number when the sizes, shapes, and…

The effect on children's test scores of different item formats used in standardized mathematics achievement tests was investigated. In a Utah school, 40 second grade students completed a mathematics computation test using eight different formats derived from five standardized achievement tests. Identical content, taken from the most frequently…