This article argues that if multimodal and new literacies are to become common practices in schools, they have to be included in both school and provincial/state large-scale assessment programmes. Building on current criterion-referenced testing in Newfoundland and Labrador which assesses a range of literacies (viewing, reading, writing,…

Distance learning generally separates students from educators, and demands that interventions be put in place to counter the constraints that this distance poses to learners and educators. Furthermore "Increased number of students in Higher Education and the corresponding increase in time spent by staff on assessment has encouraged interest…

As adaptive testing moves toward operational implementation in large scale testing programs, where it is important that adaptive tests be as parallel as possible to existing linear tests, a number of practical issues arise. This paper concerns three such issues. First, optimum item pool size is difficult to determine in advance of pool…

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, two methods for developing a common metric for the graded response model under item response theory were…

The ways in which experience and academic training influence the types of questions therapists ask of their clients were studied. Psychologists and psychology students of varying degrees of expertise (n=138) were provided an artificial intelligence program that simulated a date rape client's responses to typed questions and were asked to conduct a…

In this study, the relationships between simple learning by accretion and various cognitive ability variables were explored. Computerized tests of five sources of individual differences were administered to a sample of 714 Air Force recruits, along with a trigram-English word paired-associate task, which was presented as a foreign language…

Modern applications of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) are typically grounded in item response theory (IRT; Lord, 1980). While the IRT foundations of adaptive testing provide a number of approaches to adaptive test scoring that may seem natural and efficient to psychometricians, these approaches may be more demanding for test takers, test…

Test-retest reliabilities and practice effect magnitudes were considered for nine computer-simulated tasks of everyday cognition and five traditional neuropsychological tests. The nine simulated everyday memory tests were from the Memory Assessment Clinic battery as follows: (1) simple reaction time while driving; (2) divided attention (driving…

An item-selection algorithm to neutralize the differential effects of time limits on scores on computerized adaptive tests is proposed. The method is based on a statistical model for the response-time distributions of the examinees on items in the pool that is updated each time a new item has been administered. Predictions from the model are used…

This study investigated and compared the properties of five methods of item exposure control within the purview of estimating examinees' abilities in a computerized adaptive testing (CAT) context. Each of the exposure control algorithms was incorporated into the item selection procedure and the adaptive testing progressed based on the CAT design…

This paper presents a study on the generation of mathematics test items using algorithmic methods. The history of this approach is briefly reviewed and is followed by a survey of the research to date on the statistical parallelism of algorithmically generated mathematics items. Results are presented for 8 parallel test forms generated using 16…

Item analysis procedures appropriate for domain-referenced classroom testing are described. A conceptual framework within which item statistics can be considered and promising statistics in light of this framework are presented. The sampling fluctuations of the more promising item statistics for sample sizes comparable to the typical classroom…

Educational item banking presents observers with a considerable paradox. The development of test items from scratch is viewed as wasteful, a luxury in times of declining resources. On the other hand, item banking has failed to become a mature technology despite large amounts of money and the efforts of talented professionals. The question of which…

Item parameter estimates vary for a variety of reasons, including estimation error, characteristics of the examinee samples, and context effects (e.g., item location effects, section location effects, etc.). Although we expect variation based on theory, there is reason to believe that observed variation in item parameter estimates exceeds what…

Recent years have seen widespread adoption of automatic grading of physics homework problems. Although first-generation homework management systems provide feedback and assign scores based only on the answers, problem-solving performance on exams seems to be no worse for students using these systems than for those who receive detailed comments…