Background: Educational assessments increasingly shift towards computer-based formats. Many studies have explored how different types of automated feedback affect learning. However, few studies have investigated how digital performance feedback affects test takers' ratings of affective-motivational reactions during a testing session. Method: In…

Educational assessments often require uniform test forms, for which each test form has equivalent measurement accuracy but with a different set of items. For uniform test assembly, an important issue is the increase of the number of assembled uniform tests. Although many automatic uniform test assembly methods exist, the maximum clique algorithm…

The digital transition in educational testing has introduced many new opportunities for technology to enhance large-scale assessments. These include the potential to collect and use log data on test-taker response processes routinely, and on a large scale. Process data has long been recognised as a valuable source of validation evidence in…

In large-scale educational assessment data consistent with a simple-structure multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) model, where every item measures only one latent variable, separate unidimensional item response theory (UIRT) models for each latent variable are often calibrated for practical reasons. While this approach can be valid for…

Research has shown that the context of practice tasks can have a significant impact on learning, with long-term retention and transfer improving when tasks of different types are mixed by interleaving (abcabcabc) compared with grouping together in blocks (aaabbbccc). This study examines the influence of context via interleaving from a psychometric…

The framework and tools used for classroom assessment can have significant impacts on teacher practices and student achievement. Getting assessment right is an important component in creating positive learning experiences and academic success. Recent government reports (e.g., United States, Australia) call for the development of systems that use…

Item positions in educational assessments are often randomized across students to prevent cheating. However, if altering item positions results in any significant impact on students' performance, it may threaten the validity of test scores. Two widely used approaches for detecting position effects -- logistic regression and hierarchical…

Changes to the design and development of our educational assessments are resulting in the unprecedented demand for a large and continuous supply of content-specific test items. One way to address this growing demand is with automatic item generation (AIG). AIG is the process of using item models to generate test items with the aid of computer…

Automatic coding of short text responses opens new doors in assessment. We implemented and integrated baseline methods of natural language processing and statistical modelling by means of software components that are available under open licenses. The accuracy of automatic text coding is demonstrated by using data collected in the "Programme…

Although International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement-pioneered international large-scale assessment (ILSA) of education is now a well-established science, non-practitioners and many users often substantially misunderstand how large-scale assessments are conducted, what questions and challenges they are designed to…

Educational assessments occasionally require uniform test forms for which each test form comprises a different set of items, but the forms meet equivalent test specifications (i.e., qualities indicated by test information functions based on item response theory). We propose two maximum clique algorithms (MCA) for uniform test form assembly. The…

Automatic item generation represents a relatively new but rapidly evolving research area where cognitive and psychometric theories are used to produce tests that include items generated using computer technology. Automatic item generation requires two steps. First, test development specialists create item models, which are comparable to templates…

Purpose: To overcome the high manual effort of assessments for teaching personnel, e-assessment systems are used to assess students using information systems (IS). The purpose of this paper is to propose an extension of EASy, a system for e-assessment of exercises that require higher-order cognitive skills. The latest module allows assessing…

This article provides an overview of the development and validation of the Student Tool for Technology Literacy (ST[superscript 2]L). Developing valid and reliable objective performance measures for monitoring technology literacy is important to all organizations charged with equipping students with the technology skills needed to successfully…

Many exam programs have begun to include innovative item types in their operational assessments. While innovative item types appear to have great promise for expanding measurement, there can also be genuine challenges to their successful implementation. In this paper we present a set of four activities that can be beneficially incorporated into…