Introductory chemistry courses are required as part of the undergraduate preparation necessary for entry into an array of professional programs. Given the varied priorities of the student population in these courses, it can be difficult to present the material such that students see their individual future academic priorities represented in each…

Computerized classification of student answers offers the possibility of instant feedback and improved learning. Open response (OR) questions provide greater insight into student thinking and understanding than more constrained multiple choice (MC) questions, but development of automated classifiers is more difficult, often requiring training a…

The purpose of our study was to examine the issue of answer changing in relation to students' abilities to monitor their behaviour accurately while responding to multiple-choice tests. The data for this study were obtained from the final examination administered to students in an educational psychology course. The results of the study indicate…

Multiple-choice testing is considered one of the most effective and enduring forms of educational assessment that remains in practice today. This study presents a comprehensive review of the literature on multiple-choice testing in education focused, specifically, on the development, analysis, and use of the incorrect options, which are also…

This study responds to a question that people working in the field of learning sciences get asked regularly: What do learning scientists do? Earlier attempts to answer this question came from a need to define a new field of educational research. Now that the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) has grown into a robust and…

Objectives: To investigate the relation between the students' scores in MCQs and MEQs of the summative assessment in pediatrics at the College of medicine KKU. Introduction: Student assessment is the most difficult task in medicine since it is ultimately related to human life and safety. Assessment can take different types of formats with…

In this essay, I explore an exam format that pairs multiple-choice questions with required rationales. In a space adjacent to each multiple-choice question, students explain why or how they arrived at the answer they selected. This exercise builds the critical thinking skill known as metacognition, thinking about thinking, into an exam that also…

Metacognition has increasingly been recognized as essential for learning. This paper defines metacognition, discusses its importance, and specifies how faculty can nurture it in students to promote positive learning outcomes. The paper then offers extensive examples based on two formats: (1) activities offered before, during, and after lessons or…

We present a logistic function of a monotonic polynomial with a lower asymptote, allowing additional flexibility beyond the three-parameter logistic model. We develop a maximum marginal likelihood based approach to estimate the item parameters. The new item response model is demonstrated on math assessment data from a state, and a computationally…

Learners of a second language often have limited access to the native culture of that language in an authentic way, resulting in them committing linguistic and intercultural mistakes. One of the main advantages of task-based learning is that it can expose students to real-world circumstances, which makes learning a language more meaningful and…

This paper examined the use of assessment techniques in extensive reading and students' and teachers' perceptions on the practice of extensive reading. A total of 232 university students who were placed at different proficiency levels of classes and 13 professors participated in the study by completing a questionnaire. In-depth interviews were…

The main objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of immersive virtual reality (VR) as a medium for delivering laboratory safety training. We specifically compare an immersive VR simulation, a desktop VR simulation, and a conventional safety manual. The sample included 105 first year undergraduate engineering students (56 females).…

Diagnostic assessments are intended to support teachers' instructional decision making by providing instructionally relevant information. In this article, we propose that using cognitive theories of learning to design diagnostic assessments can provide teachers with two diagnostic outcomes: (a) the location of a student's thinking within the…

Background: This study aims to empirically answer the question of whether the role of sub-reading skills changes depending on the test format (e.g., multiple-choice vs. open-ended reading questions). The test format effect also addresses the issue of test validity--whether the reading test properly elicits construct-relevant reading skills or…

The current study aims to determine the effect of multiple-choice, matching, gap-fill and word formation items used in assessing L2 vocabulary on learners' performance and to obtain the learners' views regarding the use of these types of items in vocabulary assessment. The convenience sampling method was selected, and the participants of the study…