A course syllabus provides an easily accessible source of information about the learning activities, teaching methods, assessments, and policies the instructor intends to apply in a course. This paper describes our process of developing and applying a rubric designed to identify and describe inclusive and equitable practices observed in course…

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) to score responses is growing in popularity and likely to increase. Evidence of the validity of scores relies on quadratic weighted kappa (QWK) to demonstrate agreement between AI scores and human ratings. QWK is a measure of agreement that accounts for chance agreement and the ordinality of the data by giving…

Background/Context: Pass/fail standardized exams frequently selectively rescore failing exams and retest failing examinees. This practice distorts the test score distribution and can confuse those who do analysis on these distributions. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal showed large discontinuities in the New York City Regent test score…

For some students, standardized tests serve as a conduit to disclose sensitive issues of harm or distress that may otherwise go unreported. By detecting this writing, known as "crisis papers," testing programs have a unique opportunity to assist in mitigating the risk of harm to these students. The use of machine learning to…

A diversity of approaches for critically appraising qualitative and quantitative evidence exist and emphasize different aspects. These approaches lack clear processes to facilitate rating the overall quality of the evidence for aggregated findings that combine qualitative and quantitative evidence. We draw on a meta-aggregation of implementation…

Running Records are thought to be an excellent formative assessment tool because they generate results that educators can use to make their teaching more responsive. Despite the technical nature of scoring Running Records and the kinds of important decisions that are attached to their analysis, few studies have investigated assessor accuracy. We…

This paper introduces an application of cross-classified item response theory (IRT) modeling to an assessment utilizing the embedded standard setting (ESS) method (Lewis & Cook). The cross-classified IRT model is used to treat both item and person effects as random, where the item effects are regressed on the target performance levels (target…

Current methods for evaluating faculty teaching fall short, and one way to address this is through campus-wide initiatives that focus on change at the level of academic units. The complex context of higher education makes meaningful teaching evaluation difficult; in particular, four sobering realities of this context must be taken into account in…

Performance-based assessment is a common approach to assess the development and acquisition of practice competencies among health professions students. Judgments related to the quality of performance are typically operationalized as ratings against success criteria specified within a rubric. The extent to which the rubric is understood,…

English proficiency assessments have become a necessary metric for filtering and selecting prospective candidates for both academia and industry. With the rise in demand for such assessments, it has become increasingly necessary to have the automated human-interpretable results to prevent inconsistencies and ensure meaningful feedback to the…

Scoring essays is generally an exhausting and time-consuming task for teachers. Automated Essay Scoring (AES) facilitates the scoring process to be faster and more consistent. The most logical way to assess the performance of an automated scorer is by measuring the score agreement with the human raters. However, we provide empirical evidence that…

Rock and mineral labs are fundamental in traditional introductory geology courses. Successful implementation of these lab activities provides students opportunities to apply content knowledge. Inquiry-based instruction may be one way to increase student success. Prior examination of published STEM labs indicates that geology labs, particularly…

Double-scoring constructed-response items is a common but costly practice in mixed-format assessments. This study explored the impacts of Targeted Double-Scoring (TDS) and random double-scoring procedures on the quality of psychometric outcomes, including student achievement estimates, person fit, and student classifications under various…

Recent curricular interventions in engineering education have focused on encouraging students to develop an entrepreneurial mindset (EM) to equip them with the skills needed to generate innovative ideas and address complex global problems upon entering the workforce. Methods to evaluate these interventions have been inconsistent due to the lack of…

Globalization and increases in the numbers of English language learners have led to a growing demand for English proficiency assessments of spoken language. In this paper, we describe the development of an automatic pronunciation scorer built on state-of-the-art deep neural network models. The model is trained on a bespoke human-rated dataset that…