There is a large body of research on the effectiveness of rater training methods in the industrial and organizational psychology literature. Less has been reported in the measurement literature on large-scale writing assessments. This study compared the effectiveness of two widely used rater training methods--self-paced and collaborative…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of assessment method (essays vs. examinations) and instruction method (seminars vs. lectures) on student perceptions of the fairness of the assessment process. Department-specific combinations of these factors give a unique profile to the assessment process and to the way students interact with…

This study investigates the use of face-to-face and computer-mediated peer review in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing course to examine how different interaction modes affect comment categories, students' revisions, and their perceptions of peer feedback. The participants were an intact class of 13 students at a Taiwanese university.…

To explore the potential effect of computer type on the Test of English as a Foreign Language-Internet-Based Test (TOEFL iBT) Writing Test, a sample of 444 international students was used. The students were randomly assigned to either a laptop or a desktop computer to write two TOEFL iBT practice essays in a simulated testing environment, followed…

As a result of enrollment expansion, increasing numbers of students are entering into medical school in China. This combined with a shortage of teachers, means that the learning environment typically consists of a large classroom setting with traditional lecture-based learning (LBL) as the major mode to teaching and learning. In this article, we…

The growing body of research on the use of vignettes in teacher education courses suggests that vignette-based instruction and assessment tasks may represent a viable alternative to traditional forms of scaffolded instruction and reflective essays following classroom observations, thereby creating a bridge between college and K-12 classrooms for…

When college composition teachers carefully consider the role and function of multimodal composition in their classrooms, they can enhance the teaching of writing and communication, engage and empower students, and better prepare students for the challenges and possibilities of life in our rapidly changing digital age. To meet this teaching…

Technological developments are impacting upon UK assessment practices in many ways. For qualification awarding bodies, a key example of such impact is the ongoing shift towards examiners marking digitally scanned copies of examination scripts on screen rather than the original paper documents. This digitisation process has obvious benefits,…

Scope and Method of Study: This study develops, implements, and evaluates a new economics teaching pedagogy based on the U.S. Army's systems approach to training model. Using the approach, tasks are identified that compose the task domain for the Principles of Microeconomics course. From the 130 identified tasks, 73 are used by Economics of…

This essay offers an analysis of PowerPoint apart from the histrionics of the "'Tis and 'Taint" arguments about its value, and proposes a program of research to move forward our understanding of PowerPoint as an inscriptional system. To that end, the study begins with a discussion of PowerPoint as an inscriptional system that employs both…

This study explored the practices of two high school teachers of U.S. history and their students' performance on evidence-based history essays over 7 months. Data include pre- and posttest essays, interviews, observations, teacher feedback, assignments, and readings. Qualitative and quantitative comparisons of 42 students' work show that one class…

This paper explores "meaningful learning" as influenced by "constructivism." The study focused on assessing and comparing the quality of essays written by students who learnt a given topic in a classroom setting ("control") to those who learnt the same topic in the field ("experimental"). The objective was…