Effective assessment is vital in educational activities. We propose IWAS (intelligent Web-based assessment system), an intelligent, generalized and real-time system to assess both learning and teaching. IWAS provides a foundation for more efficiency in instructional activities and, ultimately, students' performances. Our contributions are…

Technology is transforming many aspects of society including the ways teachers teach and students learn. Although technology has been firmly established as a teaching tool across a range of content areas, educators are realizing that technology also offers innovative ways to help their students take standardized tests that comply with the mandates…

One consequence of test use in the English-language teaching community is the negative washback of tests on teaching and learning. Test preparation courses are often seen as part of the more general issue of washback. IELTS and TOEFL iBT tests, focusing on communicative competence, are anticipated to have positive washback effect on how English is…

Problem Statement: Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is a sophisticated and efficient way of delivering examinations. In CAT, items for each examinee are selected from an item bank based on the examinee's responses to the items. In this way, the difficulty level of the test is adjusted based on the examinee's ability level. Instead of…

The notion of a system adapting itself to provide support for learning has always been an important issue of research for technology-enabled learning. One approach to provide adaptivity is to use social navigation approaches and techniques which involve analysing data of what was previously selected by a cluster of users or what worked for…

We have developed simple data-mining algorithms to assess the consistency and the randomness of student responses to problems consisting of multiple true or false statements. In this paper we describe the algorithms and use them to analyze data from introductory physics courses. We investigate statements that emerge as outliers because the class…

This study investigated the effect of targeted test preparation, or coaching, on oral English as a second language test scores. The tests in question were the Basic English Skills Test Plus (BEST Plus), a scripted oral interview published by the Center for Applied Linguistics, and the Versant English Test (VET), a computer-administered and…

Although traditional methods to collect similarity data (for multidimensional scaling [MDS]) are robust, they share a key shortcoming. Specifically, the possible pairwise comparisons in any set of objects grow rapidly as a function of set size. This leads to lengthy experimental protocols, or procedures that involve scaling stimulus subsets. We…

Indirect metaphors are pervasive in everyday language: People talk about "long" vacations, "short" tempers, and "colorful" language. But, why do we use concrete lexical items that are associated with the physical world when we talk about abstract, or non-physical, concepts? A potential answer is provided by proponents…

Most computerized adaptive tests (CAT) have been studied under the framework of unidimensional item response theory. However, many psychological variables are multidimensional and might benefit from using a multidimensional approach to CAT. In addition, a number of psychological variables (e.g., quality of life, depression) can be conceptualized…

In this paper we present a model for computerized adaptive practice and monitoring. This model is used in the Maths Garden, a web-based monitoring system, which includes a challenging web environment for children to practice arithmetic. Using a new item response model based on the Elo (1978) rating system and an explicit scoring rule, estimates of…

Aim: The aims of the study were to: (1) build new item banks for a revised version of the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI) with four content domains: daily activities, mobility, social/cognitive, and responsibility; and (2) use post-hoc simulations based on the combined normative and disability calibration samples to assess the…

Objective: The study evaluated the effectiveness of an online first aid course by comparing it with the traditional instructor-led course. An effective online course increases course accessibility and mitigates the major deterrent to widespread layperson training. Design: A comparison group design evaluated performances among 25 laypersons…

This study explored EFL students and faculty's perceptions of and attitudes towards the use of online assessment and practice. A descriptive method was used, employing quantitative data collection and analyses from a sample of 400 students of different age categories and educational levels and another sample of 25 teachers in the English…

Language tools are reflections of the academic traditions of assessment developers, as well as the perceptions of language quality as held by a society. The certification of Quebec's teachers offers an interesting case in point: the Québec Government's "ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport" (MELS) requires that all students in…