If you've ever questioned the logic of reducing a student's entire academic performance to a single test score or a vague letter grade, then here's a book that will revolutionize the way you think about assessment and grading. Drawing from years of in-depth research, Robert J. Marzano provides you with guidelines and steps for designing a…

Collaborative problem solving and collaborative skills are considered necessary skills for success in today's world. Collaborative problem solving is defined as problem solving activities that involve interactions among a group of individuals. Large-scale and small-scale assessment programs increasingly use collaborative group tasks in which…

This paper discusses the rationale for enhancing the current National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) design by adding a capacity for adaptive testing. Items are tailored to the achievement level of the student in adaptive testing. The report describes a 1993 Ohio field trail of two-stage assessment carried out by the National Opinion…

Designing a remediation program to meet students' needs involves finding out what a student knows and needs to know. An online testing program, such as eduTest, may provide the answers. This test is a versatile instrument that offers benchmark tests, grade specific tests, and strand tests in the four content areas for grades K through 8. The…

With pressure to find more cost effective and less labor-intensive approaches to testing, states are seeing computer-based testing as a way to address the increasingly challenging prospect of assessing all students in a state at nearly all grades. Unfortunately, most states have not specifically considered the needs of students with disabilities.…

With the increased use of computerized adaptive testing, which allows for continuous testing, new concerns about test security have evolved, one being the assurance that items in an item pool are safeguarded from theft. In this paper, the risk of score inflation and procedures to detect test takers using item preknowledge are explored. When test…

This report documents the technology initiatives of the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) in two broad areas: (1) using technology to improve the quality, utility, and feasibility of existing measures; and (2) using technology to design and develop new assessments and measurement approaches available…

The operating characteristics of 114 mathematics pretest items from the Praxis I: Computer Based Test were analyzed in terms of item attributes and test developers' judgments of item difficulty. Item operating characteristics were defined as the difficulty, discrimination, and asymptote parameters of a three parameter logistic item response theory…

This paper reviews the salient characteristics of the current inventory of large-scale achievement tests, analyzes two recent proposals for creating a national testing program, and describes a new approach to statewide and nationwide testing that RAND is examining. Section 2 discusses the criteria typically used for evaluating large-scale testing…

This paper discusses the design and pedagogy underpinning the use of online quiz items in which students are presented with a range of questions designed to enhance understanding of complex linguistic constructions. It explores the design of different types of quiz questions from the perspective of pedagogy and cognitive demand. The particular…

There are very few examples of audio-based computerized tests, but for many disciplines, such as foreign language and music, there appear to be many benefits to this type of testing. The purpose of the present study was to develop and compare computer-delivered and audiocassette/paper-and-pencil versions of a listening test. The test was a measure…

Describes eight different levels of educational use of computers and proposes nine instructional goals for university computer resource centers to train teachers to become well-informed, competent computer users with a high level of computer literacy. (EAO)

Describes a Scottish project--"School-based assessment using item banking"--investigating the feasibility of producing computer-based test marking and reporting facilities. Teachers would construct their own tests from item banks and carry out diagnostic assessment and criterion-referenced measurement to evaluate students with SCRIBE, a…

A study of the effects of reward structures on the ability of students to evaluate the correctness of their responses to open-ended questions in a computer-based instruction lesson found students' ability to evaluate responses was influenced by their incentive to achieve. In most cases, expert evaluators and students concurred. Order of item…

Describes an automated scoring algorithm for a computer-based simulation examination of physicians' patient-management skills. Results with 280 medical students show that scores produced using this algorithm are highly correlated to actual clinician ratings. Scores were also effective in discriminating between case performance judged passing or…