Aviation English proficiency is a core competency in the global air traffic controller profession. There is, however, growing concern about the current ineffective paper-based assessment methods and the severe lack of interactive online testing for such a critical profession, one that should be ideally assessed in an authentic task and situation…

This study aims to investigate how Turkish Teacher Trainees of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) interpret implied meanings, which is an integral but lesser-studied component of pragmatic competence. The conduct of the study began with the development of an online multiple-choice discourse completion test (MDCT) through two piloting phases.…

Lexical inferencing has not led to substantial vocabulary gains. In previous studies, the learners were not obliged by design to notice the unfamiliar words and static approaches to assessment were adopted. In this quasi-experimental study, we adopted dynamic assessment (DA) approach and took measures to ensure noticing of the new words. Through…

Scientific argumentation is one of the core practices for teachers to implement in science classrooms. We developed a computer-based formative assessment to support students' construction and revision of scientific arguments. The assessment is built upon automated scoring of students' arguments and provides feedback to students and teachers.…

The article aims to outline and analyze the most demanding parts of computer-based exams for the students of the Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russian B.N. Yeltsin (Ekaterinburg, Russia) during one exam session of spring of 2016-2017. For this research, a quantitative method of mean scores for reading, listening, and…

In educational assessment, there is an increasing demand for tailoring assessments to individual examinees through computer adaptive tests (CAT). As such, it is particularly important to investigate the fairness of these adaptive testing processes, which require the investigation of differential item function (DIF) to yield information about item…

Widespread technical failures and interruptions of recent online testing in a number of states have shaken the confidence of educators and policymakers in high-tech assessment methods and raised serious concerns about schools' technological readiness for the coming common-core online tests. The glitches arose as many districts in the 46 states…

The purpose of this study was to develop an attention sequential mining mechanism for investigating the sequential patterns of children's visual scanning process in a computerized cancellation test. Participants had to locate and cancel the target amongst other non-targets in a structured form, and a random form with Chinese stimuli. Twenty-three…

Physiology and assessment constitute major bottlenecks of school learning among students with low socioeconomic status. The limited resources and household overcrowding typical of poverty produce deficits in nutrition, sleep, and exercise that strongly hinder physiology and hence learning. Likewise, overcrowded classrooms hamper the assessment of…

The Programme for International Assessment (PISA) is an important cross-national study of 15-year olds academic achievement. Although it has traditionally been conducted using paper-and-pencil tests, the vast majority of countries will use computer-based assessment from 2015. In this paper, we consider how cross-country comparisons of children's…

Automated essay scoring is a developing technology that can provide efficient scoring of large numbers of written responses. Its use in higher education admissions testing provides an opportunity to collect validity and fairness evidence to support current uses and inform its emergence in other areas such as K-12 large-scale assessment. In this…

Rural residents are at a disadvantage with regard to health status and access to health promotion activities. In many rural communities, public libraries offer support through health information provision; there are also opportunities for engagement in broader community health efforts. In a collaborative effort between an academic researcher and a…

This issue of "ZDM Mathematics Education" focuses on the formative assessment of young children's mathematical thinking, with an emphasis on computer-based approaches drawing upon on cognitive and educational research. The authors discuss several different assessment methods, including clinical interviewing, observation, and testing,…

This paper attempts to address the possibility of real change after a hundred years of exam-based assessments that produce a single mark or grade as feedback on students' progress and abilities. It uses visual feedback and analysis of graduate attribute assessment to foreground the diversity of aspects of a student's performance across subject…

In the Manchester Pharmacy School, we first adopted summative on-line examinations in 2005. Since then, we have increased the range of question types to include short answers, short essays and questions incorporating chemical structures and we achieve time savings of up to 90% in the marking process. Online assessments allow two novel forms of…