In this study, the authors investigated the role of overconfidence on students' performance on multiple-choice examinations. The authors examined the difference between students' self-assessed probability of selecting each correct answer and the proportion of correct answers that they actually selected. Results show that high-performing students…

This study examined students' alternative conceptions of reptiles and amphibians and the extent to which these conceptions remain intact through the elementary (grades 4 and 6), junior, and senior high school years. We administered multiple-choice and free-response instruments to a total of 513 students and interviewed at least 20 students at each…

Active student engagement with course materials, such as note-taking and cooperative learning, is associated with greater performance. This study investigated the relationship between scores achieved by students in an undergraduate course and active engagement during testing, whether using a cheat sheet or engaging in a form of cooperative…

The New Hampshire State Department of Education in conjunction with the state board and the Legislature, has implemented a new statewide educational improvement and assessment program. The purpose of the program is "to establish what New Hampshire students should know and be able to do and to develop and implement effective methods for…

This report, second in a series, contains school and district level data on student performance at the end of the primary grades. It provides a source of information to evaluate current school improvement efforts and facilitate decisions about curriculum, instruction, professional development, resource allocation, and staffing. The statewide…

Beginning in February 1994, twelfth-grade students who have passed the Ohio Ninth-grade Proficiency Tests in all areas will take the Twelfth-grade Proficiency Tests in writing, reading, mathematics, and citizenship. This fact sheet describes the Twelfth-grade Proficiency Test in citizenship. The test is designed to measure a twelfth-grade level of…

This booklet contains the practice tests for the Sixth-grade Ohio Proficiency Tests. Student work on these practice tests helps the teacher evaluate how well the student understands the subjects of writing, reading, mathematics, citizenship, and science. The writing test consists of two writing tasks based on one stimulus passage, and the reading,…

A study was conducted to investigate the difference in student performance on multiple choice (MC) and constructed response (CR) items relative to the achievement levels of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The study included an investigation of how estimates of student performance were affected by item response theory (IRT)…

This study explores methods for detecting gender-based differential item functioning (DIF) on the 12th grade multiple-choice and constructed-response science tests administered as part of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). Several combinations of conditioning variables were explored for DIF detection on both tests, and…

The effectiveness of the current selection system used to hire eligibility technicians was studied, and the predictive relationship between existing selection instruments and job performance criteria was investigated. Eligibility technicians are employees of San Diego County (California) whose duties include determining the eligibility of…

This document argues that current efforts to establish a national test to measure progress toward the nation's educational goals will inhibit, rather than advance, educational reform. Proponents of a national test have asked for single, primarily multiple-choice tests, or for performance assessments to measure progress toward the nation's…

This study investigated the following areas: (1) the possible effects of a written textual advance organizer or contextual visual aid on foreign language (Spanish) listening comprehension; (2) variations or interactions by learning modality preference of the learner; and (3) effects attributable to either learner learning modality or foreign…

The last of three volumes studying the relationship between writing research and instruction, this four-part report focuses on writing assessment. The first section details specifications for an instrument assessing student writing samples and the following composition skills: word processing, sentence processing, paragraph development,…

This paper describes a mechanism developed by the authors to gather student feedback from formative revision Multiple Choice Questionnaires (MCQs) within an on-line learning system. The MCQs provided first year Computer Science students with instant formative feedback, while data was also gathered about student responses, such as the percentage…

Responses to American College Test College Outcome Measures Program (ACT-COMP) items by 481 black and 9,237 white students at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) were analyzed using F. Samejima's graded model to determine the level of differential item functioning (DIF). Students had been tested using Form 8 of the ACT-COMP objective test…