The population of English Language Learners (ELLs) globally has been increasing substantially every year. In the United States alone, adult ELLs are the fastest growing portion of learners in adult education programs (Yang, 2005). There is a significant need to improve the teaching of English to ELLs in the United States and other English-speaking…

This third of three volumes reports on analytic procedures conducted to address various aspects of the scalar properties of the Device Effectiveness Forecasting Technique (DEFT). DEFT, a series of microcomputer programs applied to data gathered from rating scales, is used to evaluate simulator devices used in U.S. Army weapons training. The…

These symposium papers discuss the instructional use of computers in psychology, with emphasis on computer-produced simulations. The first, by Rich Edwards, briefly outlines LABSIM, a general purpose system of FORTRAN programs which simulate data collection in more than a dozen experimental models in psychology and are designed to train students…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect that large within-examinee item difficulty variability had on estimates of the proportion of consistent classification of examinees into mastery categories over two test administrations. The classification consistency estimate was based on a single test administration from an estimation procedure…

This is a critical review of the analytical models developed by the U.S. Army to predict training device effectiveness. The Simulation Systems Technical Area of the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences performed the research. Special consideration is given to a family of models known collectively as TRAINVICE. These…

Four discrimination indices were compared, using score distributions which were normal, bimodal, and negatively skewed. The score distributions were systematically varied to represent the common circumstances of a military training situation using criterion-referenced mastery tests. Three 20-item tests were administered to 110 simulated subjects.…

An adaptive testing strategy is described for achievement tests covering multiple content areas. The strategy combines adaptive item selection both within and between the subtests in the multiple-subtest battery. A real-data simulation was conducted to compare the results from adaptive testing and from conventional testing, in terms of test…