Asserts that authentic assessment can be applied successfully to the social studies. Describes a long-term, role-playing activity recreating the voyages of Ibn Battuta, who lived during the Islamic golden age. Includes project objectives, student assignments, a biographical sketch of Ibn Battuta, and a model of a student presentation sheet. (CFR)

A college teacher and student describe the rationale behind collaborative test taking and their efforts to implement it in a freshman English course. The approach, in which students learn to work collaboratively from the beginning of the course, allows participants to solve problems related to a writing task and teaches real-world work skills.…

Discusses the need to provide specific adaptations in instruction and assessments to students who are deaf or hard of hearing in general education classrooms. It provides a list of adaptations used in general education classrooms and includes adaptations for the environment, input, output, social, behavioral, evaluation, and grading. (CR)

A hurdles approach, where qualitatively different expectations are linked to higher grades is suggested as a way of challenging high performing students in large classes with extreme range in ability. Large classes and increasing range in student ability and preparedness as well as diverse student learning styles have made it difficult to design…

This chapter reports the results of research into how frequently students perceive faculty to engage in classroom improprieties and what they tend to do about it. (Contains 1 table.)

One hundred and twenty-seven undergraduate business majors at a regional northwestern university completed a series of hypothetical choice tasks in which they were asked to choose between two courses that varied with respect to the instructor's course evaluations, grading leniency, the course's worth/usefulness, and the assigned workload. Data…

This study explores the perceptions of different groups of L1 and L2 Israeli pre-service teachers and their instructors regarding "good" academic writing. The study further investigates whether those perceptions accurately reflect their knowledge of academic writing. Eighty-one participants graded three different essays written by…

To assess students' business writing abilities upon entry into the business program and exit from the capstone course, a multitiered assessment package was developed that measures students' achievement of specific learning outcomes and provides "value-added" scores. The online segment of the test measures five competencies across three process…

The "Student Evaluation of Instruction" (SEOI) was administered to all full-time and part-time faculty. Approximately 96,255 surveys were sent out in 5,303 envelopes; 48,602 surveys were returned to the Office of Institutional Research. The return rate for the paper surveys was 51% including late submissions. Instructors' reports were…

The Student Evaluation of Instruction (SEOI) was administered to all full-time and part-time faculty. Approximately 96,972 surveys were sent out in 5,153 envelopes; 56,440 surveys were returned to the Office of Institutional Research. The return rate for the paper surveys was 58% including late submissions. Instructors' reports were provided to…

A 67-item Assessment Practices Inventory (API) was administered to 311 inservice teachers. The application of principal components analysis to the data yielded a 6-factor solution that explained 64% of the variance. The Rasch rating scale model was applied to the API to estimate item calibrations. The factor analyzed assessment categories were…

Previous research clearly documents that teachers often award what S. M. Brookhart (1991) has referred to as a "hodgepodge grade of attitude, effort, and achievement." This paper reports on a survey of grading practices involving 310 middle and high school teachers of academic subjects in a single school system. Also surveyed were 7,367 middle and…

This literature review lists and describes current assessment methods for process writing. Writing instruction's shift of focus from product to process is part of education's greater shift of emphasis from knowledge transmission to inquiry, which allows students to become problem solvers and independent thinkers. Process writing creates…

This book offers specific how-to advice to college faculty on every stage of the testing process, including planning the test and classifying objectives to be measured, ensuring the validity and reliability of the test, and grading in such a way as to arrive at fair grades based on relevant data. The book examines the strengths and weaknesses of…

This issue contains five articles, including reports of activities of the University of Hong Kong's English Center, five action research reports, reflections on various conferences, and a book review by Ray Mackay of "Asian Voices in English." The five articles are: "Cultural Syntonicity: Co-operative Relationships between the ESP Unit and Other…