It is not known to what extent the pre-employment teacher selection instrument scores used by a Tennessee school district correlate to teachers' post-employment quality after their first year of service. Two research questions guided the study on the Correlation Between a Teacher Selection Instrument and Teacher Quality in Tennessee: (1) To what…

This summary reports on a pilot of a novel, ontology-based e-assessment system in accounting. The system, OeLe, uses emerging semantic technologies to offer an online assessment environment capable of marking students' free text answers to questions of a conceptual nature. It does this by matching their response with a "concept map" or…

This article raises questions about the use of needs assessment by those seeking to improve the performance of organizations and individuals. While the discrepancy model of needs assessment has enjoyed a long history and is widely accepted, the author states that it has several undesirable consequences in terms of its impact. This article offers…

Context: The PRACTICUM Institute has developed large-scale international programs of on-line continuing professional development (CPD) based on self-testing and feedback using the Practicum Script Concordance Test© (PSCT). Aims: To examine the psychometric consequences of pooling the responses of panelists from different countries (composite…

In this research, the cut score of a foundation university was re-calculated with bookmark method and with Angoff method, each of which is a standard setting method; and the cut scores found were compared with the current proficiency score. Thus, the final cut score was found to be 27.87 with the cooperative work of 17 experts through the Angoff…

Standards-based grading (SBG) is an approach to assessment and reporting in which scores are attached to the specific learning objectives of a course, rather than to assignments or tests. Each score represents a student's mastery of that learning objective, and may change over time in response to evidence that her level of understanding has…

Efficient and practical means of disseminating research to social workers are needed. The authors examined how 10 social work and 10 other helping profession association websites used their sites to disseminate research to their members. A rubric was used to rate the websites in 4 domains: (1) promotion, (2) accessibility, (3) dissemination, and…

The current paper on writing assessment surveys the literature on the reliability and validity of essay tests. The paper aims to examine the two concepts in relationship with essay testing as well as to provide a snapshot of the current understandings of the reliability and validity of essay tests as drawn in recent research studies. Bearing in…

Policymakers and school administrators have embraced value-added models of teacher effectiveness as tools for educational improvement. Teacher value-added estimates may be viewed as complicated scores of a certain kind. This suggests using a test validation model to examine their reliability and validity. Validation begins with an interpretive…

Most instructors at least occasionally experience grading student work as a frustrating, time-consuming task. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument can be a powerful self-awareness tool for management educators seeking to enhance their grading techniques. Evidence suggests that many management professors prefer Extraversion (E),…

The purpose of this work is to contribute to the body of knowledge on processes by which students develop interdisciplinary understanding of contents, as well as to suggest technology-enhanced means for supporting them in these processes in the context of higher education. In doing so, we suggest a rethinking of three traditional practices that…

The authors present a model for program-wide assessment of the effectiveness of writing instruction in a chemistry laboratory course. This model, which involves collaboration between faculty from chemistry, the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program, and the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, is based on several theories and…

This paper presents the theoretical and empirical foundations of the "TOEFL Junior"® assessment and its development process. The TOEFL Junior test was developed to address the increasing need for objective measures of English language proficiency for young adolescent learners, who are being introduced to English as a second or foreign…

This inquiry-based activity for high school students introduces concepts of ecology and the importance of data analysis to science. Using an investigative case, students generate independent questions about birds, access Cornell Lab of Ornithology online resources to collect data, organize and graph data using Excel, and make claims based on…

This paper addresses the effects of rater training on the rubric-based scoring of three preservice teacher candidate performance assessments. This project sought to evaluate the consistency of ratings assigned to student learning outcome measures being used for program accreditation and to explore the need for rater training in order to increase…