Next Generation Technology-Enhanced Assessment


Book Description

This book examines the types of web-based testing applications that exist, their technical requirements, and their acceptability and use in various countries.




Next Generation Technology-Enhanced Assessment


Book Description

The use of technology for workplace and occupational testing blossomed in the early years of this century. This book offers a demonstration that the first generation of these technologies have now been implemented long enough to observe the patterns and issues that emerge when these approaches evolve through technical advancement and successive application. A new set of issues and opportunities has emerged and the next generation of these applications is now coming of age. This book reflects on the last few decades of this evolutionary process from a vantage point of global experience across a wide range of workplace applications, including employment selection, development, and occupational certification. The themes and issues that arise as this broad treatment unfolds provide an essential foundation for students, researchers, and professionals who are involved with the assessment of human capability and potential in organizational and workplace contexts




Knowing What Students Know


Book Description

Education is a hot topic. From the stage of presidential debates to tonight's dinner table, it is an issue that most Americans are deeply concerned about. While there are many strategies for improving the educational process, we need a way to find out what works and what doesn't work as well. Educational assessment seeks to determine just how well students are learning and is an integral part of our quest for improved education. The nation is pinning greater expectations on educational assessment than ever before. We look to these assessment tools when documenting whether students and institutions are truly meeting education goals. But we must stop and ask a crucial question: What kind of assessment is most effective? At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored. With the promise of a productive research-based approach to assessment of student learning, Knowing What Students Know will be important to education administrators, assessment designers, teachers and teacher educators, and education advocates.




Fairness in Educational and Psychological Testing: Examining Theoretical, Research, Practice, and Policy Implications of the 2014 Standards


Book Description

This book examines scholarship, best practice methodologies, and examples of policy and practice from various professional fields in education and psychology to illuminate the elevated emphasis on test fairness in the 2014 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. Together, the chapters provide a survey of critical and current issues with a view to broadening and contextualizing the fairness guidelines for different types of tests, test takers, and testing contexts. Researchers and practitioners from school psychology, clinical/counseling psychology, industrial/organizational psychology, and education will find the content useful in thinking more acutely about fairness in testing in their work. The book also has chapters that address implications for policy makers, and, in some cases, the public. These discussions are offered as a starting point for future scholarship on the theoretical, empirical, and applied aspects of fairness in testing particularly given the ever-increasing importance of addressing equity in testing.




Technology Enhanced Innovative Assessment


Book Description

Assessment innovation tied to technology is greatly needed in a wide variety of assessment applications. This book adopts an interdisciplinary perspective to learn from advances in developing technology enhanced innovative assessments from multiple fields. The book chapters address the development of virtual assessments including game?based assessment, simulation?based assessment, and narrative based assessment as well as how simulation and game based assessments serve both formative and summative purposes. Further, chapters address the critical challenge of integrating assessment directly into the learning process so that teacher effectiveness and student learning can be enhanced. Two chapters specifically address the psychometric challenges related to innovative items. One chapter talks about evaluating the psychometric properties of innovative items while the other chapter presents a new psychometric model for calibrating innovative items embedded in multiple contexts. In addition, validity issues are addressed related to technology enhanced innovative assessment. It is hoped that the book provides readers with rich and useful information about the development of several types of virtual assessments from multiple perspectives. The authors include experts from industry where innovative items have been used for many years and experts from research institutes and universities who have done pioneering work related to developing innovative items with formative applications to facilitate learning. In addition, expert advice has been provided on validating such work.




Seamless Learning


Book Description

This book introduces readers to the latest state of research and development in seamless learning. It consolidates various approaches to and practices in seamless learning from a range of techno-pedagogical, socio-situated and socio-cultural perspectives. Further, it details our current understanding of learning in both formal and informal settings, crossover learning, incidental learning, and context-based learning approaches, together with these aspects’ linkages to the notion of seamlessness. The book is divided into sections addressing the theorization of seamless learning, understanding informal learning, research methodological issues, technology-enabled seamless learning and real-world applications of seamless learning.




Application of Artificial Intelligence to Assessment


Book Description

The general theme of this book is to present the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in test development. In particular, this book includes research and successful examples of using AI technology in automated item generation, automated test assembly, automated scoring, and computerized adaptive testing. By utilizing artificial intelligence, the efficiency of item development, test form construction, test delivery, and scoring could be dramatically increased. Chapters on automated item generation offer different perspectives related to generating a large number of items with controlled psychometric properties including the latest development of using machine learning methods. Automated scoring is illustrated for different types of assessments such as speaking and writing from both methodological aspects and practical considerations. Further, automated test assembly is elaborated for the conventional linear tests from both classical test theory and item response theory perspectives. Item pool design and assembly for the linear-on-the-fly tests elaborates more complications in practice when test security is a big concern. Finally, several chapters focus on computerized adaptive testing (CAT) at either item or module levels. CAT is further illustrated as an effective approach to increasing test-takers’ engagement in testing. In summary, the book includes both theoretical, methodological, and applied research and practices that serve as the foundation for future development. These chapters provide illustrations of efforts to automate the process of test development. While some of these automation processes have become common practices such as automated test assembly, automated scoring, and computerized adaptive testing, some others such as automated item generation calls for more research and exploration. When new AI methods are emerging and evolving, it is expected that researchers can expand and improve the methods for automating different steps in test development to enhance the automation features and practitioners can adopt quality automation procedures to improve assessment practices.




Data Analytics and Psychometrics


Book Description

The general theme of this book is to encourage the use of relevant methodology in data mining which is or could be applied to the interplay of education, statistics and computer science to solve psychometric issues and challenges in the new generation of assessments. In addition to item response data, other data collected in the process of assessment and learning will be utilized to help solve psychometric challenges and facilitate learning and other educational applications. Process data include those collected or available for collection during the process of assessment and instructional phase such as responding sequence data, log files, the use of help features, the content of web searches, etc. Some book chapters present the general exploration of process data in large-scale assessment. Further, other chapters also address how to integrate psychometrics and learning analytics in assessment and survey, how to use data mining techniques for security and cheating detection, how to use more assessment results to facilitate student’s learning and guide teacher’s instructional efforts. The book includes both theoretical and methodological presentations that might guide the future in this area, as well as illustrations of efforts to implement big data analytics that might be instructive to those in the field of learning and psychometrics. The context of the effort is diverse, including K-12, higher education, financial planning, and survey utilization. It is hoped that readers can learn from different disciplines, especially those who are specialized in assessment, would be critical to expand the ideas of what we can do with data analytics for informing assessment practices.




A Framework for K-12 Science Education


Book Description

Science, engineering, and technology permeate nearly every facet of modern life and hold the key to solving many of humanity's most pressing current and future challenges. The United States' position in the global economy is declining, in part because U.S. workers lack fundamental knowledge in these fields. To address the critical issues of U.S. competitiveness and to better prepare the workforce, A Framework for K-12 Science Education proposes a new approach to K-12 science education that will capture students' interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field. A Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: crosscutting concepts that unify the study of science through their common application across science and engineering; scientific and engineering practices; and disciplinary core ideas in the physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences and for engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues, be careful consumers of scientific and technical information, and enter the careers of their choice. A Framework for K-12 Science Education is the first step in a process that can inform state-level decisions and achieve a research-grounded basis for improving science instruction and learning across the country. The book will guide standards developers, teachers, curriculum designers, assessment developers, state and district science administrators, and educators who teach science in informal environments.




Classroom Testing and Assessment for ALL Students


Book Description

"A rare opportunity for the new generation of educators to learn alongside a well-known and experienced educator to integrate all learning styles into assessments. Principals should consider this for faculty book studies. The presented techniques will, no doubt, raise standardized test scores while teachers continue to present real curriculum."-Janette Bowen, Sixth-Grade TeacherJunction City Middle School, KSGive all students an equal chance to perform well on your classroom tests and assessments!In today's diverse classrooms, students of different socioeconomic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds and ability levels share a common learning environment. To meet each student's unique strengths and needs, educators need flexible testing and assessment strategies that fulfill the requirements for standardized assessment and accountability in ways that don't put students at a disadvantage because of their differences.Classroom Testing and Assessment for ALL Students helps both general and special education teachers meet and move beyond the challenges of NCLB and IDEA by using teacher-made tests, appropriate testing accommodations, technology-based testing, and classroom-based assessments that support the teaching and learning process so all students have the opportunity to succeed. The book offers ways for teachers to better differentiate their testing and assessment strategies through: Classroom and school-based examples in each chapterBulleted information outlining hands-on, research-based strategies for teacher implementationForms, reproducibles, stories, vignettes, reflection questions, and checklists that guide educators in applying and tailoring the strategies to their classrooms and studentsTips on using technology to help all students perform better Teachers know their students best. This resource allows teachers to design tests and assessments to accommodate the various strengths and needs of all learners in their classroom.