The provision of timely and constructive feedback is increasingly challenging for busy academics. Ensuring effective student engagement with feedback is equally difficult. Increasingly, studies have explored provision of audio recorded feedback to enhance effectiveness and engagement with feedback. Few, if any, of these focus on purely formative…

Background: This study consisted of a formative evaluation of an after-school health education program designed for adolescent females, entitled Girls on Track. Evidence-based after-school programs have potential to supplement the traditional school day, encourage social and emotional skill development, improve the quality of student health, and…

The implementation of a learning environment for young African American males, called the Glitch Game Testers, was launched in 2009. The development of this program was based on formative work that looked at the contrasting use of digital games between young African American males and individuals who chose to become computer science majors.…

The study reviewed in this paper examined the effects of "mastery learning" and "student team learning" on the math achievement of high school students. The analysis included 588 ninth-grade students in 16 urban Philadelphia high schools. The study assessed the effectiveness of the different conditions after one year by…

In light of the escalating literacy demands of the 21st Century workplace, and the reality the adolescent literacy rates remain stagnant despite considerable focus on them, there appears to be a need for translation of the role that reading comprehension plays in the growth of literacy of adolescent learners. A framework that recognizes the…

In a very short period during the spring and summer of 2012, researchers at the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) and the Illinois Education Research Council (IERC) collected data from respondents in five districts across Illinois to examine how school districts in the state approach designing and implementing new…

Biological systems, from the molecular to the ecological, involve dynamic interaction networks. To examine student thinking about networks we used graphical responses, since they are easier to evaluate for implied, but unarticulated assumptions. Senior college level molecular biology students were presented with simple molecular level scenarios;…

An assessment-oriented design-based research model was applied to existing inquiry-oriented multimedia programs in astronomy, biology, and ecology. Building on emerging situative theories of assessment, the model extends prevailing views of formative assessment "for" learning by embedding "discursive" formative assessment more directly into the…

A review of the literature pertaining to the effect and influence that interim assessments have on student achievement lacks quantitative data to determine the efficiency of their use in the classroom as a school reform tool. This study examined the strength and the direction of the relationships between interim pre and posttest assessments in…

This article focuses on curriculum-based learning communities (LCs). In these LCs, manipulation of the curriculum is intentional and often innovative, with the overarching goals of developing meaningful connections among students, between students and faculty, and between students and their coursework. The variety of curriculum-based models…

The Higher Education Academy (HEA) is committed to enhancing the quality of learning and teaching for all university students in the UK, and the inaugural conference for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects, held in April 2012 at Imperial College, London, aimed to showcase research and evidence-based educational…

Discussions surrounding assessment in the foreign languages generally focus on the two ends of the teaching/learning process: diagnostic assessment, typically used for placement purposes and administered prior to the start of instruction, and summative assessment, which evaluates learning after instruction for purposes of assigning a grade or…

Group-based learning is common practice in university classrooms. Despite the frequent student complaint of social loafing from teammates, methods for teaching students how to address teamwork issues are rarely incorporated into group assignments. Students are instructed on their final product, rather than their group process. In this article, an…

A distinction is often made in the literature about "assessment of learning" and "assessment for learning" attributing a formative function to the latter while the former takes a summative function. While there may be disagreements among researchers and educators about such categorical distinctions there is consensus that both types of assessment…

This article presents an in-depth case study of a complex community of inquiry. In this community, teachers worked collaboratively to build from situated assessments of students' "learning through reading" to refine and monitor practices designed to enhance student learning in their subject-area classrooms. In this report, we present evidence to…