Diagnostic assessment (DA) in language classrooms is reported to have a substantial role in providing immediate and quality feedback for remedial work that would improve learning (Alderson, Brunfaut & Harding; 2014; Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Huhta, 2008; Jang & Wagner, 2013). However, applying DA in class remains a challenge for many…

Writing multiple-choice test items to measure student learning in higher education is a challenge. Based on extensive scholarly research and experience, the author describes various item formats, offers guidelines for creating these items, and provides many examples of both good and bad test items. He also suggests some shortcuts for developing…

This article investigates the influence of English as the examination language on the solution of physics and science problems by non-native speakers in tertiary engineering education. For that purpose, a statistically significant total number of 96 students in four year groups from freshman to senior level participated in a testing experiment in…

This article discusses the Content Literacy Curriculum (CLC) as a framework for conceptualizing and implementing Response to Intervention (RTI) at the secondary level. It is our belief that the CLC offers an excellent RTI implementation framework for secondary schools interested in addressing literacy in the context of improved academic…

The 13th iteration of the International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2020) was originally arranged to take place in Ifrane, Morocco. Due to the SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) epidemic, EDM 2020, as well as most other academic conferences in 2020, had to be changed to a purely online format. To facilitate efficient transmission of…

States that previous research shows that readers who are given multiple perspectives on a domain excel in solving problems using material from that domain. Reports on three experiments that provide online evidence for a reinstatement-and-integration theory hypothesized previously as a possible processing account for problem solving with domain…

Investigated skills needed for critical reading of physics texts, their separability and hierarchical ranking, and relation to problem solving ability. Reports that skills required to comprehend texts in continuous format and discriminate unreported statements are respectively of higher level than and separable from those required to comprehend a…

Whether anomalous information causes an increase in questions generated by college students as they solve quantitative problems or comprehend stories was studied in 5 experiments involving 160 undergraduates. Results support an anomaly hypothesis that predicts more questions when there are anomalous transformations of original problems or stories.…

Reports two experiments that address effects of differential pre-reading instructions. Suggests that instruction that monitors procedural representations helps readers with foreign language (FL) proficiency to construct situational representations, but is of little help to solve an inference problem. Finds that individuals generate different…

The effect of cognitive style on the performance of four groups of college students (n=326) who used different strategies of study to comprehend prose was investigated. The cognitive styles of the subjects (field dependence/independence) interacted with the strategies of study and seem to affect performance on comprehension of prose at posttest.…

Compares the number and types of problem identifications good readers make with the number and types made by poor readers. (HOD)

Thirty-three college students with deafness and 10 typical students were given 30 mathematics problems to solve, 15 that were word problems. As the complexity of the descriptive information in the word problems increased along with the complexity of the problem situations, the performance of students with deafness decreased. (Contains references.)…

This study tested a model (developed by A. Lewis and R. Mayer) that simulates the comprehension processes used when solving compare problems. The basis of the "consistency hypothesis" model is that young students and even adults are more likely to make comprehension errors when the order of the terms in the relational statement of the…

The performance of 57 Mexican American bilingual college students on Spanish and English versions of problem solving tasks was investigated. The tasks included word recognition, sentence verification, reading span, syllogisms, and reasoning. The results indicated that the subjects used similar cognitive skills in performing both the Spanish and…

At intervals during the reading of an article, college students were asked to stop and state how they were preparing to answer an unspecified question about the article. Those students who had attempted to discern the question had significantly superior performance to those who had not devised such a strategy. (JN)