In recent years, the multistage adaptive test (MST) has gained increasing popularity in the field of educational measurement and operational testing. MST refers to a test in which pre-constructed sets of items are administered adaptively and are scored as a unit (Hendrickson, 2007). As a special case of Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT), a MST…

The need for data-informed decisions is not limited to national policy, state systems, or senior leadership of postsecondary institutions. Decisions that impact the achievement of higher education missions are also made by students, faculty, frontline staff, and program administrators--all of who deserve data and information to support their…

Peer grading is widely used in MOOCs and in standard university settings. The quality of grades obtained via peer grading is essential for the educational process. In this work, we study the factors that influence errors in peer grading. We analyze 288 assignments with 25,633 submissions and 113,169 reviews conducted with CrowdGrader, a web based…

While dichotomous item dominates the application of computerized adaptive testing (CAT), polytomous item and set-based item hold promises for being incorporated in CAT. However, how to assemble a CAT containing mixed item formats is challenging. This study investigated: (1) how the mixed CAT works compared with the dichotomous-item-based CAT; (2)…

This article reports on a study that examined whether vocabulary flashcards facilitate spelling acquisition. The study was designed to evaluate whether students who are blind can learn to spell words accurately and incidentally when academic vocabulary instruction is used. Auditory information was provided prior to the introduction of a flashcard,…

An essential component for assessing the accuracy and fluency of language learners is understanding how mode of communication and task type affect performance in second-language (L2) acquisition. This study investigates how text-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) and face-to-face (F2F) oral interaction can influence the…

Background: Psycholinguistic models of language production provide a framework for determining the locus of language breakdown that leads to speech-sound disorder (SSD) in children. Aims: To examine whether children with SSD differ from their age-matched peers with typical speech and language development (TD) in the ability phonologically to…

The paper-and-pencil Mental Rotation Test (Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978) consistently produces large sex differences favoring men (Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995). In this task, participants select 2 of 4 answer choices that are rotations of a probe stimulus. Incorrect choices (i.e., foils) are either mirror reflections of the probe or…

Purpose: Grammatical morphology is often a locus of difficulty for both children with language impairment (LI) and bilingual children. In contrast to previous research that mainly focused on verbal tense and agreement markings, the present study investigated whether plural and past participle formation can disentangle the effects of LI and…

This article synthesizes the conclusions of the empirical studies in this special issue and outlines key questions in future research. The research reported in this volume has identified several fundamental issues in pronunciation-focused task design that are discussed in detail and on which suggestions for further research are outlined. One…

Today smartphones and tablets do not merely pervade our daily life, but also play a major role in STEM education in general, and in experimental investigations in particular. Enabling teachers and students to make use of these new techniques in physics lessons requires supplying capable and affordable applications. Our article presents the…

Cross-level invariance in a multilevel item response model can be investigated by testing whether the within-level item discriminations are equal to the between-level item discriminations. Testing the cross-level invariance assumption is important to understand constructs in multilevel data. However, in most multilevel item response model…

The aims of this study were to determine faculty's ability to accurately and reliably categorize exam questions using Bloom's Taxonomy, and if modified versions would improve the accuracy and reliability. Faculty experience and affiliation with a health sciences discipline were also considered. Faculty at one university were asked to categorize 30…

Using simulated data, this study examined the impact of different levels of stringency of the valid case inclusion criterion on item response theory (IRT)-based true score equating over 5 years in the context of K-12 assessment when growth in student achievement is expected. Findings indicate that the use of the most stringent inclusion criterion…

A valuable extension of the single-rating regression discontinuity design (RDD) is a multiple-rating RDD (MRRDD). To date, four main methods have been used to estimate average treatment effects at the multiple treatment frontiers of an MRRDD: the "surface" method, the "frontier" method, the "binding-score" method, and…