This case study of a struggling reader suggests that learning to read is not necessarily about using the right program, but rather about making the right connection. This case describes how Ashley, a child with special needs, came to literacy in her own way in the company of Barbara Park's fictional character, Junie B. Jones, a girl about her age…

This paper explores alternative approaches for facilitating efficient, evidence-centered item development for a new type of verbal reasoning item developed for use on the GRE® General Test. Results obtained in two separate studies are reported. The first study documented the development and validation of a fully automated approach for locating the…

This paper analyses the effects of manipulating the cognitive complexity of L2 oral tasks on language production. It specifically focuses on self-repairs, which are taken as a measure of accuracy since they denote both attention to form and an attempt at being accurate. By means of a repeated measures design, 42 lower-intermediate students were…

The research reported in the current article studies the impact of learning in asynchronous discussion groups on students' final exam scores and levels of knowledge construction. Multilevel analyses were applied to uncover the specific influence of student, group and task variables. The results indicate that the impact of student characteristics…

This article examines the significance of emotion for the processes of teaching, studying and learning. The goal is to demonstrate on the basis of both theoretical examination and empirical data that emotional processes are crucial for human learning and should be taken into account in online teaching and learning as well. Emotional factors during…

An increasing number of students are choosing online education programs to complete their higher education. Research concludes that student satisfaction and retention are related to program completion. Furthermore, research indicates that physical distance alone does not influence student satisfaction and retention. In this study, we examined…

The purposes of this study were to survey the views of female adolescents about: (a) their classroom teachers' language used during instruction, (b) their attitudes toward the language of classroom instruction, and (c) views about listening behaviors. A survey design was used with 31 participants ranging in age from 15 to 18 with a mean age of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how 23 fourth-grade students with different writing abilities translated their teacher's literacy instruction into an understanding of audience awareness when writing for Internet publication. As part of their classroom literacy instruction, students learned the textual features indicative of different…

The ultimate goal of reading is to construct text meaning based on visually encoded information. Essentially, it entails converting print into language and then to the message intended by the author. It is hardly accidental, therefore, that, in all languages, reading builds on oral language competence and that learning to read uniformly requires…

Formulating-Hypotheses (F-H) items present a situation and ask the examinee to generate as many explanations for it as possible. This study examined the generalizability, validity, and examinee perceptions of a computer-delivered version of the task. Eight F-H questions were administered to 192 graduate students. Half of the items restricted…

The purpose of this study was to gauge the disadvantage, if any, of reaching difficult items that appear earlier in a test, at the expense of not reaching easier items that appear later in a test. The study focused on Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) data and examined the effect for females, Asian…

The relative difficulty of the seven test-wiseness skills measured by the Gibb Experimental Test of Testwiseness, a measure of cue-using skills, was studied. Participants were 243 undergraduates from 3 universities, 79% of whom were Caucasian. Participants reported a mean grade point average of 3.0 on a 4-point scale. Results suggest that some of…

In 1982 and 1983 the Measurement and Evaluation Center of the University of Texas at Austin conducted a set of three studies analyzing student performance in a physics course required for engineering students (Physics 303K) in relation to the students' scores on the College board Mathematics Level 1 and Physics tests and to an introductory physics…

An increasingly popular test format allows examinees to choose the items they will answer from among a larger set. When examinee choice is allowed fairness requires that the different test forms thus formed be equated for their possible differential difficulty. For this equating to be possible it is necessary to know how well examinees would have…

Applications of item response theory to practical testing problems including equating, differential item functioning, and computerized adaptive testing, require that item parameter estimates be placed onto a common metric. In this study, three methods for developing a common metric under item response theory are compared: (1) linking separate…