Through the annual ABET assessment process, Computer Information Systems faculty in the College of Business at a regional institution were able to diagnose problems regarding students not satisfying our program's Student Outcomes. Often, the impediments to student success were not technical in nature and prompted faculty to consider non-technical…

This article chronicles the evolution of an ePortfolio as a practicum/internship capstone project used to assess skill development in graduate level counselor education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The authors describe the successes and challenges encountered from the implementation of an internally designed and maintained ePortfolio in…

Physics applets are well known appealing resources to teach and learn physics, and a large number of them are available on the Internet. Nevertheless, not all of them are of the same quality, because such applets do not fit every specific teaching/learning purpose. The start question was which features should have a physics applet in order that it…

Teacher candidates who worked with small groups of children during a semester long pre-student teaching practicum developed four point rubrics for each of the lesson plans they created on a weekly basis. The scope of this practicum is discussed along with an action research project pertaining to the rubric assessments they utilized. Findings…

We investigate whether commonly used value-added estimation strategies produce accurate estimates of teacher effects under a variety of scenarios. We estimate teacher effects in simulated student achievement data sets that mimic plausible types of student grouping and teacher assignment scenarios. We find that no one method accurately captures…

In countless discussions over the past ten years with educators considering the adoption of the Quality Matters (QM) Rubric™, the most common question asked is, "Can you prove that applying the QM Rubric to an online course improves outcomes--retention, grades, learner satisfaction?" This question seems necessary, reasonable, and even…

Research into Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) in Higher Education has largely focused on the positive effects of PASS on student motivation, retention and engagement. Less attention has been given to the cognitive, affective and professional development of the PASS Student Mentors through their engagement with students and academic staff. At…

Reading-to-write (RTW) tasks are becoming increasingly popular and have already been used in several high-stakes English proficiency exams, either replacing or complementing a prompt-based essay test. However, it is still not clear that what accounts for successful or unsuccessful performance on an integrated reading-writing task is owing to the…

Equating test forms is an essential activity in standardized testing, with increased importance with the accountability systems in existence through the mandate of Adequate Yearly Progress. It is through equating that scores from different test forms become comparable, which allows for the tracking of changes in the performance of students from…

AMLE's hot new release provides teachers with more than 60 ways to authentically assess student learning. Whether it's researching and describing Lewis and Clark's discoveries of the western frontier in a traditional journal format or writing blog entries from the perspective of a cell, students will learn to demonstrate and assess their own…

We describe a Mastery Rubric for the design and evaluation of an institutional curriculum in the responsible conduct of research (RCR), motivated by new federal (US) research funding requirements for documenting this training over investigators' careers. A Mastery Rubric outlines the desired knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) for a course or…

This article examines assessment of "intangible" concepts in dance education such as creativity, risk, originality, or artistic thinking. Through the development of assessment workshops for arts educators, conducted from 2009 through 2011 across the state of Illinois and supported by the Illinois Arts Council, the authors developed a…

In teaching young dancers ballet, the utilization of effective assessments in partnership with supportive and creative teaching strategies can transform not only the learning experience, but the dancer as well. In this article, the author shares a "growth grade rubric" that specifically addresses three areas in ballet training: (1) skills and…

Mastering content vocabulary is critical to the success of students with high-incidence disabilities in the general education curriculum. General education classrooms often do not offer the opportunities necessary for these students to master important vocabulary. Teachers often look to technology to help. Several studies have indicated that…

This inquiry utilizes a sheltered instruction approach to lesson planning with the intention of improving teacher candidates' instruction to English Language Learners (ELLs). In this study a web-based questionnaire and a sheltered instruction lesson plan template were used to facilitate opportunities for teacher candidates to reflect on and…