National and international rankings of universities are now an accepted part of the higher education landscape. Rankings aggregate different performance measures into a single scale and therefore depend on the methods and weights used to aggregate. The most common method is to scale each variable relative to the highest performing entity prior to…

Reviews of editorial practices and academic studies have shown that journalists often rely on organization websites--and online newsrooms in particular--to inform news stories. Yet, at a time when many academics are called upon as experts by the media, university newsrooms have been ignored. To fill this gap, this study assesses newsrooms of…

As part of the CBAL® learning and assessment initiative in mathematics, we developed a hypothesized learning progression (LP) for geometrical measurement in 1, 2, and 3 dimensions based on a synthesis of empirical literature in this field and through expert review. The geometrical measurement LP is intended to represent a developmental progression…

In this paper we present an alternative typology for determining success and dropout in massive open online courses (MOOCs). This typology takes the perspectives of MOOC-takers into account and is based on the their intentions and subsequent behaviour. An explorative study using two MOOCs was carried out to test the applicability of the typology.…

What is Goal Attainment Scaling? In this article, Lee Ann Jung defines it as a way to measure a student's progress toward an individualized goal. Instead of measuring a skill at a set time (for instance, on a test or other assignment), Goal Attainment Scaling tracks the steps a student takes over the course of a year in a targeted skill. Together,…

University rankings have raised huge interest in the social sciences because of their methodological foundations and impact. Rankings have also gained popularity in the media system. In this article we analyze the coverage offered by the media to the Italian Research Evaluation exercise--VQR 2004-2010. Even though this evaluation did not have…

Higher education institutions are joining many other social entities in shifting how participants are evaluated; work is undergoing increasing analysis through metrics, big data analytics, and related methodologies. As applications of academic metrics expand, new formulations of what is considered as "excellence" in teaching and research…

Recently, many universities have drawn attention to world university rankings, which reflect the international competition of universities and represent their relative statuses. This study does not radically contradict types of global university rankings but calls for an examination of the effects of their indicators on the final ranking of…

For more than 1,043,839 international students, the United States is the destination of choice to pursue higher education. Although Chinese students account for almost one in three international students in the U.S., there are many unknowns about the influential factors behind their college decision. This qualitative study explores the…

In this article, A. Adrienne Walker introduces the concept of person fit to education stakeholders as a source of evidence to inform the trustworthiness of a test score for interpretation and use (validity). Person fit analyses are used in educational measurement research to explore the degree to which a person's test score can be interpreted as a…

Recent policies intended to improve teacher quality have focused on the preparation that teachers receive before entering the classroom. A short-lived federal rule would have required every state to assess and rank teacher-preparation programs by their graduates' impact on student learning. Though the federal rule was repealed, last year some 21…

There are quite a few challenges in the development of an automated writing placement model for non-native English learners, among them the fact that exams that encompass the full range of language proficiency exhibited at different stages of learning are hard to design. However, acquisition of appropriate training data that are relevant to the…

Consequences of competition for global university rankings, such as changes in funding modes, have been extensively discussed in the field of higher education. However, few studies have reviewed its implications on knowledge production. This study provides a contextualised method for theorising the implications of this competition on the…

College rankings have become a ubiquitous part of American higher education. As the popularity of rankings has increased, so have the number of research studies attempting to better understand the impact rankings have on college/university admissions outcomes. In the past, these studies have focused almost exclusively on elite national…

This research tests whether Holderness Jr., D. K., Myers, N., Summers, S. L., & Wood, D. A. [(2014). "Accounting education research: Ranking institutions and individual scholars." "Issues in Accounting Education," 29(1), 87-115] accounting-education rankings are sensitive to a change in the set of journals used. It provides…