Unforeseen complications during the administration of large-scale testing programs are inevitable and can prevent examinees from accessing all test material. For classification tests in which the primary purpose is to yield a decision, such as a pass/fail result, the current study investigated a model-based standard error approach, Bayesian…

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…

Generally, some courses in a degree program, but not all, have a hurdle, threshold or minimum pass requirement, which is often described as a condition that must be met by a student in order to pass a course. As assessment drives learning for most university learners, and first year experience is critical for retention and success, understanding…

Subscore reporting under item response theory models has always been a challenge partly because the test length of each subdomain is limited for precisely locating individuals on multiple continua. Diagnostic classification models (DCMs), providing a pass/fail decision and associated probability of pass on each subdomain, are promising…

This SoTL project explored sources of student anxiety and motivation across student assessment conditions of traditional numerical grading and pass/fail grading and sought to determine if pass/fail grading was helpful in lowering student anxiety while increasing student motivation to learn. Results indicated that students scored equally well on a…

With the Malaysian government's aim to increase the number of Bumiputera professional accountants, it is important for institutions to search for efficient ways in delivering professional accounting education in order to improve the performance of students. Despite the suggestion from prior literature to adopt student-centered pedagogy, the issue…

Content assessment has broadly improved in e-learning scenarios in recent decades. However, the e-Learning process can give rise to a spatial and temporal gap that poses interesting challenges for assessment of not only content, but also students' acquisition of core skills such as self-regulated learning. Our objective was to discover students'…

Faculty have conducted many studies on the relationship between learning mode and student performance but few researchers have evaluated final grades, grade distribution, and pass rates in a sophomore introductory statistics course with a non-traditional student population who self-selected the learning mode from among different course sections.…

Gatekeeper courses such as Anatomy and Physiology are often referenced in discussions regarding the national shortage of persons in allied health professions. In an attempt to bolster access to STEM professions, some community colleges are mandating prerequisite courses such as Natural Sciences and/or General Biology for STEM gatekeeping courses.…

In the current context of distance learning, learning management systems (LMSs) make it possible to store large volumes of data on web browsing and completed assignments. To understand student behavior patterns in this type of environment, educators and managers must rethink conventional approaches to the analysis of these data and use appropriate…

This paper explores the attitudes of undergraduate language learners and their lecturers towards the introduction of an attendance policy in an Irish Higher Education Institution. It also analyses the relationship between the introduction of this policy and student performance (average grade) and progression (pass rates). The policy was introduced…

Successful testing programs rely on high-quality test items to produce reliable scores and defensible exams. However, determining what statistical screening criteria are most appropriate to support these goals can be daunting. This study describes and demonstrates cost-benefit analysis as an empirical approach to determining appropriate screening…

My dissertation "Choice and Inequality in Higher Education" describes the way seemingly benign choices predict course and campus experiences and can perpetuate inequality. I draw on literatures of capital, habitus, identity development, and gender status beliefs and contribute to literature on stratification and sociology of education. I…

Many Open Educational Resource (OER) and Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) studies explore cost savings, impact on learning outcomes, and student perceptions of the materials. While OER/ZTC research reports positive student perceptions (Brandle et al., 2019), textbook research reports negative student perceptions of digital textbooks (Behnke, 2018). This…

This study examines whether including more contextual information in data analysis could improve our ability to identify the relation between students' online learning behavior and overall performance in an introductory physics course. We created four linear regression models correlating students' pass-fail events in a sequence of online learning…