This article presents the consensus of an National Council on Measurement in Education Presidential Task Force on Foundational Competencies in Educational Measurement. Foundational competencies are those that support future development of additional professional and disciplinary competencies. The authors develop a framework for foundational…

Research in the area of Open Student Models (OSMs) has shown that external representations of the student model can be used to facilitate educational processes such as student reflection, knowledge awareness, learning, collaboration, negotiation, and student model diagnosis. OSMs can be integrated into existing learning systems or become a…

Both a student-centered instruction approach and a classroom management technique based on the learning protocol are known as protocol-guided learning. This paper describes the protocol-guided learning model's implications for classroom practice and its impacts on classroom reconstruction with the aim of ensuring that learning actually occurs on…

The log-linear cognitive diagnosis model (LCDM) is a modern technique that dichotomously classifies individuals (e.g., possession and non-possession) on attributes of a multidimensional construct, which is particularly suited to diagnostic and formative assessments where a classification decision is desired (e.g., to assign intervention or not).…

This article considers the value of honors education beyond its marked contributions to enrollment management goals. Suggesting that quantitative assessments toward understanding the value of honors fail to capture its breadth, interdisciplinary focus, and engagement, authors posit a new way of measuring impacts from "contagion model"…

Sociology faculty are accountable to multiple stakeholders to demonstrate that our academic programs are effective and that students are learning. Despite the ubiquity of mandated program review practices, which often include the assessment of student learning, research is lacking on the extent to which these efforts lead to improvements in…

In this digital ITEMS module, we introduce the framework of nonparametric item response theory (IRT), in particular Mokken scaling, which can be used to evaluate fundamental measurement properties with less strict assumptions than parametric IRT models. We walk through the key distinction between parametric and nonparametric models, introduce the…

In this digital ITEMS module, Dr. Jeffrey Harring and Ms. Tessa Johnson introduce the linear mixed effects (LME) model as a flexible general framework for simultaneously modeling continuous repeated measures data with a scientifically defensible function that adequately summarizes both individual change as well as the average response. The module…

Despite the call for an argument-based approach to validity over 25 years ago, few examples exist in the published literature. One possible explanation for this outcome is that the complexity of the argument-based approach makes implementation difficult. To counter this claim, we propose that the Assessment Triangle can serve as the overarching…

The amount of data available in the context of educational measurement has vastly increased in recent years. Such data are often incomplete, involve tests administered at different time points and during the course of many years, and can therefore be quite challenging to model. In addition, intermediate results like grades or report cards being…

Although more nuanced understandings of assessment have been proposed in the physical education literature, assessment practices remain relatively underdeveloped, and when used, tend to focus on traditional, summative evaluations of learning. However, physical education teacher education programs can be used as an intervention to help pre-service…

How might we know whether our schools or system are set up to optimise learning? How can we find out whether we are getting the most from technology? How can we evaluate our innovation or think through whether our change initiative will bring about its desired results? Teachers and educational leaders who grapple with such questions will find this…

High-impact practices, such as learning communities, capstones, undergraduate research, and community-based experiences, are effective pedagogies. Most of these practices have been around for decades. By clustering the effective elements of these activities through the term "high-impact practices," we bring together elements which we…

Schools across the nation know the importance of student achievement; which is at the core of teaching and learning. Here in Texas, we have an accountability rating system that helps gauge how well students are doing annually. Texas accountability system is based on a system of indexes that provides an all-inclusive assessment of the performance…

In recent years, e-learning and b-learning designs for graduate courses have proliferated in the European Higher Education Area. This paper includes the definition for a model for the assessment of the quality of on-line teaching based on an audit by specialised technical personnel who are independent of the design of the teaching materials and…