The use of inter-rater reliability (IRR) methods may provide an opportunity to improve the transparency and consistency of qualitative case study data analysis in terms of the rigor of how codes and constructs have been developed from the raw data. Few articles on qualitative research methods in the literature conduct IRR assessments or neglect to…

The three missions of universities are education, research, and knowledge/technology transfer. At the micro-level of the research and knowledge/technology transfer mission, we position researchers, as individuals who decided to pursue a scientific career in academia, with the PhD as the starting point. While existing literature acknowledges the…

Student engagement needs to be context-specific to embrace holistic learning for increasingly diverse students in higher education. This paper presented a case study on the context-specific adaptation of a student engagement measure for a private university in Bangladesh. The adaptation process involved steps such as benchmarking theoretically…

The use of digital media among student community has increased their level of distraction during classroom teaching. Capturing their attention in classrooms, has become a cumbersome task for teaching faculty. Therefore, most of the academic institutions have resorted to the use of activity-based learning for science and engineering students that…

Opportunity to learn (OTL) is a ubiquitous measure of the likelihood of learning in educational research, which typically has been characterized by three dimensions: time, coverage of content, and quality of instruction. The last dimension has been defined in highly divergent ways, which gives it a double-edged nature. While it may be…

This article introduces generalizability theory (G-theory) to institutional research and assessment practitioners, and explains how it can be utilized to evaluate the reliability of assessment procedures in order to improve student learning outcomes. The fundamental concepts associated with G-theory are briefly discussed, followed by a discussion…

Since the beginning of the 21st century, evaluability assessments have experienced a resurgence of interest. However, little is known about how evaluability assessments have been used to improve future evaluations. In this article, we identify characteristics, challenges, and opportunities of evaluability assessments based on a scoping review of…

Until recently, legal challenges to using value-added models (VAMs) throughout the United States (US) for high-stakes teacher evaluative decisions (e.g., merit pay, tenure, and termination) were unsuccessful, especially in the state of Florida. Hence, prior and still, multiple teachers throughout Florida have been terminated or involuntarily…

Purpose: The purpose of this clinical focus article was to illustrate the potential of employing conversation analysis (CA) as a method for assessing social communication that is neurodiversity affirming. Method: This clinical focus article will provide an overview of CA and explain how it offers a theoretically grounded means of analyzing…

Work-integrated learning (WIL) is a vital pedagogical strategy in higher education for engaging student teachers to apply their knowledge and skills in authentic contexts. This paper provides an exploratory case study of an open distance and e-learning university (ODeL) in South Africa, to evaluate the effectiveness of online assessments for…

For decades, educators and policy makers have decried low graduation rates at US colleges, advocating policies and making investments to improve graduation. We analyze a decade of Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data for four-year colleges to investigate how much institutions have improved their graduation rates from 2008…

Program evaluations that lack experimental design often fail to produce evidence of impact because there is no available control group. Theory-based evaluations can generate evidence of a program's causal effects if evaluators collect evidence along the theorized causal chain and identify possible competing causes. However, few methods are…

This case study is based on a program evaluation of a professional certificate program that trains early childhood care and education providers to build and support young children's emotional literacy. The research project described in the case study will address approaches to methodological combination, justifying research design and changes to…

To assist in resolving the perceived lack of transversal competencies (TCs) of engineering graduates by industry, this study investigates the characteristics of transforming an existing industry TC instrument for use in engineering education. The instrument consists of 36 nuanced sub-competencies with the corresponding definitions and descriptive…

This brief from the Region 2 Comprehensive Center, in consultation with the New York State Education Department, presents seven state case studies that illustrate the implementation of performance-based assessments. It contributes to the growing research on performance-based assessment, highlighting specific state-level policies that include…