A small-scale action research project was carried out on students' feedback histories on one undergraduate module. Old grades and comment sheets were collected and analysed by staff for recurring advice to individual students on the target module. This advice was then synthesized to create simple individual learning plans for the students'…

It is accepted that formative assessment can lead to gains in attainment. Although claims have also been made that these techniques bring benefits in terms of self-esteem and motivation, the evidence here is limited. This article reports an exploratory study which focused on formative assessment techniques and primary children's views of…

Many programs for mentoring of librarians exist within organizations, for specific areas of librarianship, or for particular groups of librarians. These programs generally depend on face-to-face contact and some organizational commonalities or similarity in positions. With the advent of online communication, could a more general program matching…

The aim of the study was to look at the effectiveness of combining a variety of teaching and learning methods in an attempt to facilitate students' understanding of assessment criteria. Fifty-three psychology students were asked to complete the mismatch exercise (Norton et al., 2002), and a booklet entitled "Your Assignment results and how to…

While much of L2 teacher feedback research has focused on the effectiveness of feedback and its impact on student revision and writing, little has been done to examine teachers' feedback in the larger classroom context of teaching and learning to ascertain the functions teacher feedback serves from an assessment-for-learning perspective. Using…

Since the publication of the Dearing report (1997) there has been an increasing emphasis on the quality of teaching and learning provision within higher education institutions (HEIs). This focus on provision has in turn generated much educational research into "approaches" to both teaching practice and student learning within higher education…

Testing students once a year, with data reported many months later, is like using an autopsy to determine how to help a patient, says Cindy Ambrose, chief academic officer of the Horry County Schools in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. In Horry County and many other districts around the country, assessment that monitors vital signs on an ongoing…

In this contribution we describe a short development course for in-service physics teachers. The course structure and materials are based on the results of educational research, and its main objective is to provide in-service teachers with a first contact with the active learning strategy "Tutorials in Introductory Physics," developed by…

The September 2006 report "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education," by the commission appointed by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, identifies many areas of improvement for U.S. higher education and specifies numerous recommendations (totaling more than 50, according to some counts) for consideration by…

Consider test data, a specified set of dichotomous skills measured by the test, and an IRT cognitive diagnosis model (ICDM). Statistical estimation of the data set using the ICDM can provide examinee estimates of mastery for these skills, referred to generally as attributes. With such detailed information about each examinee, future instruction…

Institutions partner for a variety of reasons (Russell and Flynn, 2000), but resource sharing often serves as a key motivating factor (Brumbach and Villadsen, 2002; Keener, Carrier, and Meaders, 2002). Such was the impetus for development of the Connected Campuses of Technology (CCT), a partnership among five colleges of technology. The…

"The Electric Company" ("TEC") television show won the hearts of children because it made learning fun. Thirty years later, the iconic show has returned with the goal of not only teaching literacy, but also numeracy (the ability to work with and understand numbers) and mathematics vocabulary in a fun, entertaining, and engaging…

This research study was implemented within the subject headquarters of a regional center, an organization responsible for security cooperation in Europe and Eurasia. The focus of the study was the center's program of security education. This program was designed to support evolving security objectives of foreign countries in order to increase the…

This qualitative case study examined implementation of the ePortfolio, developed by the Hawai'i Department of Education as a system to store formative and summative assessment supporting standards-based education. The focus of the study examined factors increasing teacher willingness, confidence and knowledge in implementation of electronic…

This is the fourth report of a process evaluation of Palm Beach County Prime Time, Inc., an intermediary organization dedicated to improving the quality of afterschool programs, by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. It covers the 2007-2008 program year, which was the inaugural year of Prime Time's formal Quality Improvement System (QIS)…