Instructional planning is an important part of successful teaching. Therefore, quality lesson planning is accepted as an important indicator of teacher knowledge and ability. This is no different for creative drama. Although drama is strongly rooted in the participating group's creativity and spontaneity, its success depends on a careful and…

Standards-based grading, in which grading should be designed to communicate to students their current level of mastery with regards to well-articulated standards, is becoming popular at the K-12 level. As yet, the literature addressing standards-based grading at the university level is scarce. In this paper, I document my attempts to put into…

Inculcating collaborative problem solving (hereinafter CPS) skills to help develop students' knowledge, especially for problem solving (PS) involved in the subject of physics is of utmost importance in the 21st century. It was on such grounds that in the present study, physics PS learning was innovated by engaging students' generated animation…

This paper explores a method to support instructors in assessing cognitive skills in their course, designed to enable aggregation of data across an institution. A rubric authoring tool, "BASICS" (Building Assessment Scaffolds for Intellectual Cognitive Skills) was built as part of the Queen's University Learning Outcomes Assessment (LOA)…

Much recent STEM research indicates that course integration improves the student learning experience and fosters stronger connections among concepts and skills; this study attempts to evaluate whether or not students learn the design process more fully in the integrated version of a required first-year course, Design Thinking in Technology.…

Students in introductory science laboratory courses benefit from comprehensive technical writing instruction. Written communication is an important skill for people in the workforce as well as education; STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) students need to develop good technical writing skills, and most enter college with…

This article reports on a design-based implementation research (DBIR) project that addresses the question: "How can classrooms be supported at scale to achieve the three-dimensional learning goals of the Next Generation Science Standards?" Inherent in this question are three key design challenges: (i) "three-dimensional…

Articles discussing and analysing student peer-review activities proliferate the educational literature, typically describing one or more class exercises where students provide feedback on each other's work. These papers usually focus on a peer-review activity designed as a scholarly study, and make conclusions about its success or otherwise.…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Promoting Faculty Engagement in Assessment: Relatively Simple Ideas (Elizabeth E. Smith and Sarah R. Gordon); (2) Comparing Trends in Graduate Assessment: Face to Face vs. Online Learning (Lesley Page and Mike Cherry); (3) Assessing Information Literacy on a Regional…

This study is part of a larger project exploring students' thinking of Dynamic Measurement (DYME), an approach to area measurement that engages students in dynamic digital experiences of measuring rectangular surfaces through sweeping lengths. The goal of this study was to evaluate the extent to which students could bridge the mathematical…

This study compares the language proficiency gains of two groups of students taking a business English course module in a bilingual university in Catalonia (Spain). Whereas one of these groups followed a 'translanguaging' or 'plurilingual' pedagogy, the other followed a strictly monolingual approach. Participants were 54 mostly Catalan/Spanish…

The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a paradigm shift from face-to-face to online teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) courses through widely recognized virtual platforms. The suddenness of the movement did not give enough time for the tertiary-level EFL teachers in Bangladesh to be prepared. In consequence, the…

Purpose: Our proof-of-concept study tested the feasibility of virtual testing using child assessments that were originally validated for in-person testing only. Method: Ten adult-child dyads were assigned to complete both in-person and virtual tests of language, cognition, and narratives. Child participants fell between the ages of 4 and 8 years;…

As a branch of artificial intelligence, automated speech recognition (ASR) technology is increasingly used to detect speech, process it to text, and derive the meaning of natural language for various learning and assessment purposes. ASR inaccuracy may pose serious threats to valid score interpretations and fair score use for all when it is…

In Winter 2021-2022, the Nebraska Student-Centered Assessment System (NSCAS) assessments are administered in ELA and mathematics in Grades 3-8. In Spring 2021-2022, the NSCAS assessments are administered in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics in Grades 3-8 and in science in Grades 5 and 8. The purposes of the NSCAS assessments are to…