In "The Promise and Practice of Next Generation Assessment," David T. Conley presents the case for a new, comprehensive system of assessment using different measurements for different purposes. Changes in the purposes of education, he argues, demand forms of assessment that go beyond merely ranking students to supporting the ambitious…

A full-scale oral communication assessment was conducted by the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) during the academic year 2013-14. Key components of this assessment included faculty involvement at all stages of assessment and collaboration with assessment coordinators and lead staff personnel. The VCCS Office of Institutional Research and…

Nearly all states have standards for student learning and they have assessment programs to measure students' proficiency on those standards. But schools within each state nonetheless are left to develop their own standards-based student report cards as the primary means of communicating information about students' performance. To address the…

In the opening paper in this Special Edition I outlined the major issues that led to the establishment of "project e-scape". The project was intended to develop systems and approaches that enabled learners to build real-time web-based portfolios of their performance (initially) in design & technology and additionally to build systems…

This study obtained basic information from teachers and students on the challenges and prospects of implementing continuous assessment (CA) in the Nigerian school system. Secondary Schools in Ilorin, the capital city of Kwara State, located in the central region of Nigeria were sampled for use in the study. It employed survey research design…

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in the development and dissemination of high-quality instructional and formative assessment tools to support teachers' incorporation of the Core Common State Standards (CCSS) into their classroom instruction. Literacy experts have developed a framework and a set of templates that teachers can use…

Learning outcomes are described as written statements of what a learner is expected to know, understand and/or be able to do at the end of a period of learning. At the beginning of the 90s, a EU pilot project on ECTS showed that study programmes were much easier to compare if they were described in terms of outcomes, instead of inputs. The…

The idea that formative assessments embedded in a curriculum could help guide teachers toward better instructional practices that lead to greater student learning has taken center stage in science assessment research. In order to embed formative assessments in a curriculum, curriculum developers and assessment specialists should collaborate to…

The Assessment Snapshots digital resource is a current project to support academic learning about assessment by diffusing knowledge and understanding of locally contextualised good practice in assessment at the University of Western Sydney. An initial collection of Snapshots was made available to academic staff on the university web site in early…

Electronic portfolios are a student-centered outcomes-based assessment regime involving learners in the gathering, selection, and organization of artifacts synthesized into a compilation purposed to demonstrate knowledge, skills, and/or achievements supported by reflections that articulate the relevance, credibility, and meaning of the artifacts…

A collaboration between secondary teachers and university faculty to implement the use of writing portfolios for student assessment in English illustrates that the process of reform implementation is crucial. The testimony of teachers, administrators, and university consultants shows that participants viewed the change, its process, and the…

A multimodal career education model entitled BEST IDEA was field tested as an approach to the problem of retaining skilled nurses in the work force. Using multimodal assessment and intervention strategies derived from the multimodal behavior therapy of Arnold Lazarus, researchers developed an individualized career development assessment and…

Since 1988, Vermont has been developing a state assessment program, the centerpiece of which is the student portfolio and "best pieces" drawn from it. The state's use of portfolio results will be limited to reporting aggregates, but within schools, teachers and principals may use the portfolios as they choose. The assessment program,…

The Vocational Competency Achievement Tracking System (VoCATS) in North Carolina is a competency-based instructional management system that allows the collection of data on student performance achievement before, during, and after instruction. A preliminary pilot study was conducted to evaluate the implementation of the VoCATS program with…

Faced with a shortage of suitably qualified teachers in many subject areas, the United Kingdom Government has set up a number of initiatives to explore ways of supporting students' learning in classes taught by underqualified subject specialists and classes with no specialist teacher. One such initiative has been the Key Stage 3 (11-14 age range)…