Key "generic" assessment task words such as "discuss" and "critically evaluate" are integral to higher education assessment. Although sources such as study skills guides give generic decontextualised glossaries of these words, much research rightly argues for greater dialogue between students (particularly…

The aim of this article is to study teachers' attitudes toward assessment of students' learning and their assessment practices in Georgia's general educational institutions. Georgia is a country in the South Caucasus with a population of 4.5 million people, with 2300 general educational institutions and about 559,400 students. The research…

In this article, the authors share a variety of ways to formatively assess basic fact fluency. The define fluency, raise some issues related to timed testing, and then share a collection of classroom-tested ideas for authentic fact fluency assessment. This article encourages teachers to try a variety of alternative assessments from this sampling,…

Objective: This article brings the discussions on incorporating perceived importance across study areas into the study of client satisfaction and cautions the use of multiplicative scores (multiplying satisfaction and importance scores) as a weighting method. An alternative weighting method is provided. Method: Analyze data from a client…

In this article, we use the findings of a study conducted in a university in the southeast of Mexico to examine strengths and limitations of portfolios to assess formatively the quality of teaching. The research is part of the study: Model for the Development and Evaluation of Academic Competencies, involving researchers from six Mexican…

This paper explores alternative assessment methods from the perspective of categorizations. It addresses the technologies that support assessment. It discusses initial, formative, and summative assessment, as well as objective and subjective assessment, and formal and informal assessment. It approaches each category of assessment from the…

Traditional teacher evaluation systems have little to no impact on changing teacher behavior or improving student achievement. Subsequently, studies and reports show the lack of and need for multidimensional teacher evaluation system. This deficiency and need is especially evident in Michigan due to the state's recent legislative mandate that…

Although there is some debate over the exact mix of student achievement, observations, and results from other measures that combine to create an evaluative rating for a teacher's effectiveness, there is consensus among researchers that it should include multiple measures. Most states have already begun to use new systems to evaluate teachers or…

This formative evaluation study of a professional development institute for K-12 educators examined immediate outcomes and short-term impacts on participants' learning and change in mathematics teaching practice. Participants' journals and interviews were analyzed using qualitative methods and a grounded theory (the discovery of theory from…

In the four-plus years since the author retired, he has spoken about teaching and learning (T & L) at more than 65 further education colleges, sixth form colleges and conferences. Looking back over these occasions and the emails that he has received from tutors, the author realises that there is one topic more than any other that preoccupies…

This research explores the process of assessment within the arena of architectural education by questioning traditional assessment practices and probing into the conditions that necessitate change. As architectural educators we have opened our studios to digital technologies for the purposes of design and representation, but how do we measure and…

A problem that has been the focus of much recent research in privacy preserving data-mining is the frequent itemset hiding (FIH) problem. Identifying itemsets that appear together frequently in customer transactions is a common task in association rule mining. Organizations that share data with business partners may consider some of the frequent…

This publication offers SEAs and LEAs steps for evaluating a Request for Proposal (RFP) that allows input from a wide range of participants and specific subject matter experts, permits flexibility and weighted scoring in appropriate areas and provides an objective and defensible process for determining the vendor finalist.

The present study focuses; firstly, on analysing academics' conceptions of the purpose of assessment; secondly, on their assessment practices; and thirdly, on the relationship between their conceptions and practices. The data consisted of interviews with 28 pharmacy teachers. The analysis resulted in a continuum of categories of conceptions, from…

In the typical application of a cognitive diagnosis model, the Q-matrix, which reflects the theory with respect to the skills indicated by the items, is assumed to be known. However, the Q-matrix is usually determined by expert judgment, and so there can be uncertainty about some of its elements. Here it is shown that this uncertainty can be…