Quality is a multidimensional and transversal concept also in the field of higher education. This and other considerations revealed some problems during application of quality principles to study programmes, emerged from the first accreditation experience in Italy. The objective of this article is to provide a simple self-assessment tool for…

Background: Particularly in higher education, not only a view of science as a means of finding absolute truths (absolutism), but also a view of science as generally tentative (multiplicism) can be unsophisticated and obstructive for learning. Most quantitative epistemic belief inventories neglect this and understand epistemic sophistication as…

Teacher self-efficacy has predominantly been explored using quantitative instruments such as Likert scales-based questionnaires. Several researchers have questioned these methods, suggesting they offer only a limited view of the concept. This paper considers their claim by exploring the self-efficacy of UK secondary science teachers participating…

Digital badges are electronic icons used to recognize learning or participation in activities. Open digital badges offer the additional affordance of embedded metadata that can link to the criteria for earning the badge, evidence of the skill, and other information including issuer details. Badge systems have prompted instructional designers to…

This paper presents a developed higher education quality assessment model (HEQAM) that can be applied for enhancement of university services. This is because there is no universal unified quality standard model that can be used to assess the quality criteria of higher education institutes. The analytical hierarchy process is used to identify the…

Research was carried out to identify pre-service biology teachers' views on "structured grid", one of the alternative assessment and evaluation tools available to teachers. A questionnaire form, consisting of four open-ended questions, was used as a data collection tool. Changes were made to the questionnaire to take into account the…

The case study addressed in this article illustrates the value of continuous response measurement (CRM) for testing and refining messages produced for distribution to Extension audiences. We used CRM to evaluate the responses of Extension educators and Natural Resources Conservation Service technical service providers to a video describing…

This study focuses on teachers' use of informal formative assessments (IFAs) aimed at improving students' learning and teachers' recognition of students' learning processes. The study was designed as an explorative case study of four middle school teachers and their students at a charter school in the northeastern U.S.A. The data collected for the…

Game-based learning is an effective learning method, whose performance depends on the quality of the educational game. Due to versatile game environments with complex backgrounds, evaluations are not easy to implement. Consequently, it is difficult for educators to determine to what degree a game may be qualified. This study proposes a novel,…

This paper investigates the utilization of a social network tool in order to promote creativity in higher education. Buddypress was selected as a social network tool and de Bono's "6 thinking hats" as a creativity strategy. The participants were 17 undergraduate students from a case study in a University in Greece in the field of social…

The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive case study was to explore how principals, teachers, and instructional specialists (in small rural communities) perceive the influence of principal leadership style on teacher capacity, motivation, and setting, and the subsequent influence on student achievement in northern Arizona. The study sample was…

With much emphasis now placed upon determining the effectiveness of widening participation (WP) interventions, there is value in identifying evaluation methods best able to provide insights into the impact of this work. One method that has received little attention in the field of WP and yet has considerable potential in this respect is associated…

Purpose: Scholars agree that evaluation of participatory action research is inherently valuable; however there have been few attempts at evaluating across methods and across interventions because the perceived success of a method is affected by context, researcher skills and the aims of the participants. This paper describes the systematic…

One of the key aims of formative assessment in higher education is to enable students to become self-regulated learners (Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006). Based on Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick's (2006) framework, this exploratory study investigates which formative assessment practices proposed by them were used by one college EFL writing teacher to…

In this paper, the effect of continuous assessment on the learning outcomes of two chemical engineering courses is studied over a several-year period. Average grades and passing percentages of courses after the final examination are reported and also student feedback on the courses is collected. The results indicate significantly better learning…