Comparison is an important geographic method and a common task in geography education. Mastering comparison is a complex competency and written comparisons are challenging tasks both for students and assessors. As yet, however, there is no set test for evaluating comparison competency nor tool for enhancing it. Moreover, little is known about…

The COVID-19 pandemic put academic institutions around the world in the difficult position of suddenly having to organize many lectures and examinations over online channels only, due to students' physical access to their campus buildings being restricted. While the search for possible solutions to this problem was often challenging, this…

Ensuring comparability of Likert-style items across different countries is a widespread challenge for authors of large-scale international surveys. Using data from the EUROGRADUATE Pilot Survey, this study employs a series of latent class analyses to explore which response patterns emerge from self-assessment of acquired and required skills of…

This study examined the joint effects of social comparisons (comparisons of one's own achievements with those of others), dimensional comparisons (comparisons of one's own achievements in different domains), and temporal comparisons (comparisons of one's own achievements across time) on students' ability assessments. For the first time a…

This paper aims to address Digital Readiness in Higher Education Institutions from the perspective of data-informed and evidence-based assessment of Digital Readiness. Related research suggests that existing instruments for assessing digitalization aspects are limited to self-assessment, and there is a need for data-informed frameworks that will…

Many contemporary analyses criticise metrics-based evaluation in the higher education context as a neoliberal technology, notwithstanding the different national contexts and organisational topographies in which metrics are used. This Anglo-German study offers a comparative exploration of the role of metrics in two contrasting cases: highly…

As higher education quality assurance in many countries in Europe has become a mature activity, some agencies carrying out external quality assurance are developing beyond their core tasks and missions. The current study identifies new tasks taken up within quality assurance agencies and analyses the drivers behind such development. Based on an…

Assessment is critical in postsecondary education, as it is at all levels. Assessments are classified into four types: diagnostic, summative, evaluative, and formative. Recent trends in assessment have migrated away from summative to formative evaluations. Formative evaluations help students develop expertise and concentrate their schedules, ease…

Social semiotic discussions about the role played by representations in effective teaching and learning in areas such as physics have led to theoretical proposals that have a strong common thread: in order to acquire an appropriate understanding of a particular object of learning, access to the disciplinary relevance aspects in the representations…

Person-centered teacher behavior is positively related to cognitive and affective-motivational student outcomes. Although underlying teacher attitudes are thought to be of great importance for person-centered teacher-student relationships, this aspect has not been considered in empirical studies to date. This study examined the internal structure…

Previous research has focused on self-assessments rather than objective assessments for assessing teachers' technological knowledge (TK). Notwithstanding, empirical studies have failed to show stable relationships between self-assessments and objective assessments. In this study, we investigate the extent to which scenario-based self-assessments…

Initiating effective feedback processes is a major goal in university teaching. However, systematic investigations of structural feedback elements making instructor feedback economic, concise, motivating and beneficial for learning are still scarce. In our study, we compare two feedback modes with respect to learning gains and changes in…

In some institutions of higher learning, one of the approaches to successful governance is through student assessment of teachers, dubbed Student Assessment of Faculty or Student Evaluation of Teaching and extensively used in the United States of America (USA). In schools and colleges, the usual largest bloc and primary stakeholders are the…

In this paper, the authors discuss their experiences with ungrading at a small public university in the U.S. and a large public university in Germany. The courses described are Calculus 1 and a content course for pre-service secondary teachers of mathematics. The professors teach differently: one with lecture, the other with inquiry-based…

Through co-occurrence analysis of 1139 documents (1964-2018) we identified discussions about the implementation of student teaching evaluation (SET). We found that: (1) Attention to SET originated in the US in the 1970s, spreading to German-speaking countries in the mid-1990s and continuing in China and Latin America in the early 2000s. (2) SET is…