This paper reports the outcomes of a School of Law project undertaken in response to issues arising during the implementation of an institutional criterion-referenced assessment policy. The project involved the development of a set of generic assessment criteria and standards, or rubric, which could be customized to the requirements of individual…

Background: From 2007 to 2008, serial researches were conducted on the Student Learning Experiences, Student Learning Outcomes and Assessment Practices of an MBA degree program offered by the Asia International Open University (Macau) in collaboration with the higher institutions of the Mainland. Aims: This paper reports the findings of a research…

Instructional technology is a growing field which uses technology as a means to solve teaching and learning challenges, both in the classroom and outside the classroom that is in distance learning environments. Multimedia is an interactive instructional technology used in the classroom for teaching learning process has a wide significance to the…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of two teaching models, the expository presentation of Merrill and Tennyson's model and Gagne's model, in acquisition and maintenance of square and triangle concepts in students with mental retardation. The participants of the study were chosen from students with mental…

Increasingly, academic institutions are being required to improve the validity of the assessment process; unfortunately, often this is at the expense of reliability. In medical schools (such as Leeds), standardized tests of clinical skills, such as "Objective Structured Clinical Examinations" (OSCEs) are widely used to assess clinical…

The comparability of examinations in different subjects has been a controversial topic for many years and a number of criticisms have been made of statistical approaches to estimating the "difficulties" of achieving particular grades in different subjects. This paper argues that if comparability is understood in terms of a linking…

In 2005, the undergraduate advisory committee at the University of Toronto Mississauga found that across all disciplines, writing proficiency was the skill weakness that generated the greatest concern. Students reported that they often found writing tasks intimidating, and suggested that effective feedback and guidance would improve their writing.…

This report has a simple aim: to present results from international assessments so readers can judge for themselves how American students stack up globally. It's intended to be a stand-alone supplement to the "Education Olympics" web event held between August 8th and August 22nd, 2008 (see edolympics.net). It shows how the U.S. has…

The Multimedia Assisted Test of English Speaking was designed to assess global speaking competence of Korean speakers of English at Sookmyung Women's University. The test was developed with the help of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages for their proficiency guidelines and of the Center for Applied Linguistics for their…

The European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) has been developed and instituted to facilitate student mobility and academic recognition. This paper presents, discusses, and illustrates the pertinence and the limitation of the current statistical distribution of the ECTS grades, and we propose an alternative way to calculate the ECTS…

This article argues that if multimodal and new literacies are to become common practices in schools, they have to be included in both school and provincial/state large-scale assessment programmes. Building on current criterion-referenced testing in Newfoundland and Labrador which assesses a range of literacies (viewing, reading, writing,…

Explains Subkoviak's method for estimating alternate-form reliability from one administration of a criterion-referenced test and describes computer program that handles tests for large number of examinees and allows application of Subkoviak's technique. Concludes that program is superior to other methods since user can directly check…

Criterion-referenced assessment arguably results in greater reliability, validity and transparency than norm-referenced assessment. This article examines this assertion with reference to an example from a second year undergraduate law unit at the Queensland University of Technology, LWB236 Real Property A. When designing criterion-referenced…

In tertiary institutions in Australia, and no doubt elsewhere, there is increasing pressure for accountability. No longer are academics assumed "a priori" to be responsible and capable of self management in teaching and assessing the subjects they run. Procedures are being dictated more from the "top down". Although academics…

This article investigates justice judgments concerning grading. In two studies with secondary students (N[subscript 1]=350 academic-track students; N[subscript 2]=225 intermediate [n=81] and academic-track students [n=144]) attending the 7th to the 12th grade level, participants were presented with vignettes describing three different grading…