Clickers are also referred to as classroom response systems. They are small-handheld electronic devices that resemble a television remote control, used by students to respond to questions posed by instructors. Typically, questions are provided to students using electronic on-screen presentations. Results of students' responses can be immediately…

E-rater[R] is an automated essay scoring system that uses natural language processing techniques to extract features from essays and to model statistically human holistic ratings. Educational Testing Service has investigated the use of e-rater, in conjunction with human ratings, to score one of the two writing tasks on the TOEFL-iBT[R] writing…

"Harvard Education Letter" is published bimonthly at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This issue of "Harvard Education Letter" contains the following articles: (1) Integrated Data Systems Link Schools and Communities: Researchers Combine School and Non-School Data to Inform Interventions and Policy (Patti Hartigan);…

Research suggests that between 25% to 40% of students experience test anxiety, with students with disabilities and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds having higher prevalence rates. Since test anxiety impacts student well-being and the validity of the important educational decisions based on testing data, this article…

Much recent psychometric literature has focused on cognitive diagnosis models (CDMs), a promising class of instruments used to measure the strengths and weaknesses of examinees. This article introduces a genetic algorithm to perform automated test assembly alongside CDMs. The algorithm is flexible in that it can be applied whether the goal is to…

This article describes the process of design and implementation of GALACTICA ("Greek And Latin Accidence Consolidation Training, Internet-Centred Assessment") in support of the University of Oxford's Classics Faculty language consolidation classes. The context and aims of the previous paper-based "assessment" system are…

This chapter addresses different modalities of assessment, provides an overview of the assessment processes of the basic skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) tested by the Cambridge First Certificate in English (FCE) examination, and explores the ways in which the FCE Online Course and Tester--the resources provided through the…

Although computerized adaptive tests have enjoyed tremendous growth, solutions for important problems remain unavailable. One problem is the control of item exposure rate. Because adaptive algorithms are designed to select optimal items, they choose items with high discriminating power. Thus, these items are selected more often than others,…

This paper describes some of the principles for building a freely available web-based university with open content. The "tutor-web" is an international project for web-assisted education, including such free and open access. This project was initiated by the University of Iceland in partnership with many universities around the world,…

Universal Institute Charter School, a Title I school in South Philadelphia, uses instructional software for reading that offers diagnostic features so that teachers can quickly identify individual students' needs and respond to them. Because of the success students experienced in the learning support and summer school environments, the program was…

After a brief review of recent advances in sequential analysis involving sequential generalized likelihood ratio tests, we discuss their use in psychometric testing and extend the asymptotic optimality theory of these sequential tests to the case of sequentially generated experiments, of particular interest in computerized adaptive testing. We…

Advances in natural language processing (NLP) and automatic speech recognition and processing technologies offer new opportunities for language testing. Despite their potential uses on a range of language test item types, relatively little work has been done in this area, and it is therefore not well understood by test developers, researchers or…

In this article, we will describe the development of an assessment instrument for Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) for deaf children in bilingual education programs. The assessment instrument consists of nine computerized tests in which the receptive and expressive language skills of deaf children at different linguistic levels (phonology,…

As the use of mobile learning educational applications has become more common anywhere in the world, new concerns have appeared in the classroom, human interaction in software engineering and ergonomics. new tests of foreign languages for a number of purposes have become more and more common recently. However, studies interrelating language tests…

In the United Kingdom (UK) there are two ways for applicants to fulfill the requirement to show their knowledge of English language and life in the UK: they can take a computer-based citizenship test or attend an English class which includes citizenship teaching. This article describes the background to the test and the struggle to ensure that…