Ensuring that teaching candidates are well prepared to enter the classroom is a critical mission for teacher preparation programs and state agencies that approve programs and set teacher licensure standards. Teaching performance assessments (TPAs) can be used to assess the readiness of potential teachers because they require candidates to provide…

The phenomenon of first impression is well researched in social psychology, but less so in the study of OSCEs and the multiple mini interview (MMI). To explore its bearing on the MMI method we included a rating of first impression in the MMI for student selection executed 2012 at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany (196…

Literacy assessment is essential for effective literacy instruction and training. However, traditional paper-based literacy assessments are typically decontextualized and may cause stress and anxiety for test takers. In contrast, serious games and game environments allow for the assessment of literacy in more authentic and engaging ways, which has…

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if attending a face-to-face midterm exam review with the instructor predicts final exam performance in an Anatomy and Physiology I course. Students were invited to attend office hours in small groups to review their midterm exams. Multiple linear regression was used to test whether attendance at…

In a pair of studies, the present research examined mindfulness as a mediator through which perceived support for the basic psychological needs of autonomy and competence facilitate adaptive outcomes in a university classroom setting. In Study 1 (N = 199), dispositional mindfulness mediated the relation between perceived support for autonomy and…

Extant work on the importance of children's executive function (EF) for academic skills typically employs either direct assessments of EF skills or adult reports of children's EF behaviors. Each approach has advantages, yet few studies have examined how different EF measurement approaches distinctly relate to child outcomes. We examined how direct…

Cognitive factors have been recognised as important in the interpreting process, but whether they could serve as valid components of interpreting aptitude still awaits further investigation. This study explores the predictive value of cognitive fluency in the simultaneous interpreting (SI) performance of trainee interpreters. Cognitive fluency…

Universities increasingly record lectures and make them available online for students. Though the technology to record these lectures is now solidly implemented and embedded in many institutions, the impact of the usage of recorded lectures on exam performance is not clear. The purpose of the current study is to address the use of recorded…

Mathematics teachers often give cumulative final exams, but little research has been done on the effects that cumulative exams given throughout the semester have on student grades and content knowledge. This study went beyond a cumulative final exam, and investigated the benefits of cumulative versus non-cumulative semester exams on students'…

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) constitute a valuable and economical teaching force in many higher education undergraduate programmes. However, student satisfaction with their teaching has attracted little attention in the research literature. This study aimed at examining students' evaluation of teaching of GTAs in discussion groups, as well…

Screening and monitoring student reading progress can be costly and time consuming. Assessment embedded within the context of online instructional programs can capture ongoing student performance data while limiting testing time outside of instruction. This paper presents two studies that examined the validity of using performance measures from a…

The past few years has seen the rapid growth of data mining approaches for the analysis of data obtained from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The objectives of this study are to develop approaches to predict the scores a student may achieve on a given grade-related assessment based on information, considered as prior performance or prior…

We use longitudinal data from Washington State to provide estimates of the extent to which performance on the edTPA, a performance-based, subject-specific assessment of teacher candidates, is predictive of the likelihood of employment in the teacher workforce and value-added measures of teacher effectiveness. While edTPA scores are highly…

Open online distance learning in higher education has quickly gained popularity, expanded, and evolved, with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as the most recent development. New web technologies allow for scalable ways to deliver video lecture content, implement social forums and track student progress in MOOCs. However, we remain limited in…

It is important to consider the question of whether teacher-, course-, and student-related factors affect student ratings of instructors in Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) in English Language Teaching (ELT). This paper reports on a statistical analysis of SET in two large EFL programmes at a university setting in the Sultanate of Oman. I…