Effective communication skills are essential for success in both academic and professional contexts. This concept paper presents a novel framework designed to operationally define and support the development of assessments of communication skills with a specific emphasis on K-12 settings. Through discussions on important considerations for the…

Extracting information efficiently from game/simulation-based assessment (G/SBA) logs requires two things: a well-structured log file and a set of analysis methods. In this report, we propose a generic data model specified as an extensible markup language (XML) schema for the log files of G/SBAs. We also propose a set of analysis methods for…

Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is a critical competency in a variety of contexts, including the workplace, school, and home. However, only recently have assessment and curriculum reformers begun to focus to a greater extent on the acquisition and development of CPS skill. One of the major challenges in psychometric modeling of CPS is…

Over the past 8 years, U.S. kindergarten classrooms have been impacted by policies mandating or recommending the administration of a specific kindergarten entry assessment (KEA) in the initial months of school as well as the increasing reliance on digital technology in the form of mobile apps, touchscreen devices, and online data platforms. Using…

From 2006 to 2008, Educational Testing Service (ETS) produced a series of reports titled "A Culture of Evidence", designed to capture a changing climate in higher education assessment. A decade later, colleges and universities already face a new set of challenges resulting from societal, technological, and various other influences. ETS…

Simulations are widely used. Simulations produce numbers that are deductive demonstrations of what a model says will happen.They produce numerical results that are consistent with the premises of the model used to generate the numbers. These simulated numerical results are not empirical data that address aspects of the world that lies outside the…

Collaboration is generally recognized as a core competency of today's knowledge economy and has taken a central role in recent theoretical and technological developments in education research. Yet, the methodology for assessing the learning benefits of collaboration continues to rely on educational tests designed for isolated individuals. Thus,…

This review paper constitutes the first step within a larger research effort to develop an interactive pragmatics learning tool for second and foreign language (L2) learners and users of English. The tool will primarily endeavor to support pragmatics learning within the language use domain "workplace." Given this superordinate objective,…

The current study used simulated data to investigate the properties of a newly proposed method (Yao's rater model) for modeling rater severity and its distribution under different conditions. Our study examined the effects of rater severity, distributions of rater severity, the difference between item response theory (IRT) models with rater effect…

Automated scoring models for the "e-rater"® scoring engine were built and evaluated for the "GRE"® argument and issue-writing tasks. Prompt-specific, generic, and generic with prompt-specific intercept scoring models were built and evaluation statistics such as weighted kappas, Pearson correlations, standardized difference in…

Several complex sample standard error estimators based on linearization and resampling for the latent regression model of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are studied with respect to design choices such as number of items, number of regressors, and the efficiency of the sample. This paper provides an evaluation of the extent…

This paper presents the development of the fusion model skills diagnosis system (fusion model system), which can help integrate standardized testing into the learning process with both skills-level examinee parameters for modeling examinee skill mastery and skills-level item parameters, giving information about the diagnostic power of the test.…

In survey research, sometimes the formation of groupings, or aggregations of cases on which to make an inference, are of importance. Of particular interest are the situations where the cases aggregated carry useful information that has been transferred from a sample employed in a previous study. For example, a school to be included in the sample…

Full account of the latent regression model for the National Assessment of Educational Progress is given. The treatment includes derivation of the EM algorithm, Newton-Raphson method, and the asymptotic standard errors. The paper also features the use of the adaptive Gauss-Hermite numerical integration method as a basic tool to evaluate…

Bayesian network models offer a large degree of flexibility for modeling dependence among observables (item outcome variables) from the same task that may be dependent. This paper explores four design patterns for modeling locally dependent observations from the same task: (1) No context--Ignore dependence among observables; (2) Compensatory…