The use of electronic portfolios for authentic student assessment is growing rapidly (Batson, 2002). Creating portfolios electronically offers a number of benefits not available using traditional paper-based portfolios. Advantages include the portability from one application or institution to another, wider accessibility of the portfolio, and the…

This paper discusses how the authors' department curricula, classroom environments, and ultimately student learning might be improved by "high tech" assessment and evaluation techniques to find out "what people really care about." Collaborative technologies are used to gather and process the opinions of students, faculty, and…

Districts must hire "highly qualified teachers" to implement "research-based best practices" using "data-driven decisions" to positively impact student achievement. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 has provided educators a whole new set of catch phrases. As states, districts, and educators work to define…

This study examines the effect of item response time across 30 items on ability estimates in a high stakes computer adaptive graduate admissions examination. Examinees were categorized according to 4 item response time patterns, and the categories are compared in terms of ability estimates. Significant differences between response time patterns…

Since the writing section of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) computer based test (CBT) is a single-prompt essay test, it is very important to ensure that each prompt is as fair as possible to any subgroups of examinees, such as those with different native language backgrounds. A particular topic of interest in this study is the…

The purpose of this research was to establish, within the constraints of the methods presented, whether the computer is capable of scoring essays in much the same way that human experts rate essays. The investigation attempted to establish what was actually going on within the computer and within the mind of the rater and to describe the degree to…

Information provided for computerized adaptive test (CAT) simulees was compared under two conditions on two moderately correlated trait composites, mathematics and reading comprehension. The first condition used information provided by in-scale items alone, while the second condition used information provided by in- and out-of-scale items together…

Recent developments of person-fit analysis in computerized adaptive testing (CAT) are discussed. Methods from statistical process control are presented that have been proposed to classify an item score pattern as fitting or misfitting the underlying item response theory (IRT) model in a CAT. Most person-fit research in CAT is restricted to…

Computerized adaptive tests (CATs) pose major obstacles to the traditional assessment of differential item functioning (DIF). This paper proposes a modification of the SIBTEST DIF procedure for CATs, called CATSIB. CATSIB matches test takers on estimated ability based on unidimensional item response theory. To control for impact-induced Type I…

Most human gradings of essays are holistic, or "overall." Therefore, Project Essay Grade (PEG), an attempt to develop computerized grading of essays, has concentrated most of its research on overall grading. It has successfully simulated human judges. However, since computer grading is less expensive than human grading, PEG has also…

The primary concern or focus of a certification or licensure test is to obtain valid criterion-referenced information regarding a candidate's competence to practice. When the test is administered by computer, a valid pass/fail decision can be made with fewer items than an equivalent paper/pencil test by targeting items at the passing score and…

An important problem facing institutions of higher education is the number of students reporting that they are not adequately prepared for the difficulty of college-level courses. To meet this problem, a computerized adaptive testing package was developed that permitted remote placement testing of high school students via the World Wide Web. The…

This report, based on a survey completed by testing directors in states that are members of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), describes the status of online testing in SREB states. Overall, SREB states are paying limited attention to online testing. Only Virginia is moving systematically to implement online testing. By spring 2004, all…

A computerized adaptive test (CAT) administration usually requires a large supply of items with accurately estimated psychometric properties, such as item response theory (IRT) parameter estimates, to ensure the precision of examinee ability estimation. However, an estimated IRT model of a given item in any given pool does not always correctly…

This paper proposes a new Information-Time index as the basis for item selection in computerized classification testing (CCT) and investigates how this new item selection algorithm can help improve test efficiency for item pools with mixed item types. It also investigates how practical constraints such as item exposure rate control, test…