Hailey Schnorr has spent years peering into the bedrooms, kitchens, and dorm rooms of students via Webcam. In her job proctoring online tests for universities, she has learned to focus mainly on students' eyes. Ms. Schnorr works for ProctorU, a company hired by universities to police the integrity of their online courses. ProctorU is part of a…

The authors review the influence of state, national and international large-scale assessments (LSAs) on education policy and research. They distinguish between two main uses of LSAs: as a means for conducting research that informs educational reform and LSAs as a tool for implementing standards and enforcing accountability. The authors discuss the…

The purpose of this pilot study was to explore student perceptions and outcomes surrounding the use of a labor and delivery simulation as a midterm exam in a maternal-newborn lecture course. An exploratory case study design was used to gain a holistic view of the simulation experience. Data from focus groups, written debriefings, simulation…

As noted in "Beyond Crossroads" (AMATYC, 2006), for today's students, learning mathematics is participatory and depends on the active involvement of students (p. 53). The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics shares the point of view that the teaching and learning of mathematics should include giving students ample opportunity to think…

This Forum discusses the significant growth of international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) since the mid-1990s. Addey and Sellar's contribution ("A Framework for Analysing the Multiple Rationales for Participating in International Large-Scale Assessments") outlines a framework of rationales for participating in ILSAs and examines the…

Team-based learning (TBL) has been shown to improve many aspects of student learning, but no previous research has systematically examined the effects of group exams on English as an Additional Language (EAL) students in university classrooms. This study is a small-scale action research examining the role of students' English language status in…

Despite the popularity of task-based language teaching (TBLT) in foreign language (FL) education at elementary school, it remains unclear how young learners' FL abilities can best be evaluated with tasks. The present study seeks to understand developmental differences in interactions among elementary-school students during task-based language…

This study examined the relationship between student anxiety about high-stakes testing and their subsequent test performance. The FRIEDBEN Test Anxiety Scale was administered to 1,134 11th-grade students, and data were subsequently collected on their statewide assessment performance. Test anxiety was a significant predictor of test performance…

Standardized measures are often used as an index of students' reading comprehension and scores have important implications, particularly for students who perform below expectations. This study examined secondary-level students' patterns of responding and the prevalence and impact of non-attempted items on a timed, group-administered,…

After many previous failed attempts to reach illiterate adults, the award-winning South African "Kha Ri Gude" mass literacy campaign, launched in 2008, undertook to ensure that learners seized the opportunity to learn--for many adults, this was a "last chance". Written from an insider perspective by the campaign's founding…

This article is a commentary of a paper by Derek C. Briggs and Frederick A. Peck, "Using Learning Progressions to Design Vertical Scales That Support Coherent Inferences about Student Growth," which describes an elegant potential framework for at least beginning to address three priorities in large-scale assessment that have not been…

Questionnaires administered manually can cause surreptitious peer pressure on the candidate to finish when 'the others" have completed theirs, forcing students to rush or skip individual items or may hinder the ability of noticing participants who may be having difficulty understanding certain items. These drawbacks can have serious…

Teacher-candidate course assessment is one topic that has not been adequately explored in teacher education literature where pre-service teachers' voices are rarely heard. This mixed-methods study explored a group of female pre-service teachers (n = 83) enrolled in a Diploma of Education program to identify their preferred method of assessment for…

The aspirational model resulted from the authors' secondary analysis of the Mother/Child (M/C) test block from the 2008 National Assessment of Educational Progress restricted data that examined the responses of the national sample of 8th-grade students (n = 1648). This test block presented no artmaking task and consisted of the same 13 questions…

Principals and teachers do not use large-scale assessment results because the lack of distinct and reliable subtests prevents identifying strengths and weaknesses of students and instruction, the results arrive too late to be used, and principals and teachers need assistance to use the results to improve instruction so as to improve student…