Education Commons^™

Nationwide, Collaborative Assessment Of Medical Student Learning Outcomes: The Australian Medical Assessment Collaboration, David Wilkinson, Benedict J. Canny, Jacob Pearce, Hamish Coates, Daniel Edwards

Dr Daniel Edwards

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Research Process Improves The Product: Results Of A Faculty-­Librarian Collaboration, Divonna M. Stebick, Janelle L. Wertzberger, Margaret E. Flora, Joseph W. Miller

Janelle Wertzberger

When an education professor and a reference librarian sought to improve the quality of undergraduate student research, their partnership led to a new focus on assessing the research process in addition to the product. In this study, we reflect on our collaborative experience introducing information literacy as the foundation for undergraduate teacher education research. We examine the outcomes of this collaboration, focusing on the assessment of the process. Using a mixed methods approach, we found that direct instruction supporting effective research strategies positively impacted student projects. Our data also suggest that undergraduate students benefit from not only sound research strategies, …

Nationwide, Collaborative Assessment Of Medical Student Learning Outcomes: The Australian Medical Assessment Collaboration, David Wilkinson, Benedict Canny, Jacob Pearce, Hamish Coates, Daniel Edwards

Dr Jacob Pearce

No abstract provided.

Towards A Growth Mindset In Assessment, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Assessment and reporting processes shape student, parent and community beliefs about learning – sometimes in unintended ways.

Towards A Growth Mindset In Assessment, Geoff N. Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Measuring Progress, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Geoff Masters discusses the need for a system of educational assessment that provides long-term pictures of student progress.

On The Use Of Rotated Context Questionnaires In Conjunction With Multilevel Item Response Models, Raymond J. Adams, Petra Lietz, Alla Berezner

Dr Petra Lietz

On The Use Of Rotated Context Questionnaires In Conjunction With Multilevel Item Response Models, Raymond Adams, Petra Lietz, Alla Berezner

Professor Ray Adams

Background: While rotated test booklets have been employed in large-scale assessments to increase the content coverage of the assessments, rotation has not yet been applied to the context questionnaires administered to respondents.

Methods: This paper describes the development of a methodology that uses rotated context questionnaires in conjunction with multilevel item response models and plausible values. In order to examine the impact of this methodology on the continuity of the results, PISA 2006 data for nine heterogeneous countries were rescaled after having been restructured to simulate the outcomes of the use of different rotated context questionnaire designs.

Results: Results revealed …

Measure For Measure : A Review Of Outcomes Of School Education In Australia, John Ainley, Eveline Gebhardt

Dr John Ainley

There have been a plethora of research reports providing information about the achievements of students in Australian schools and how those achievements differ among jurisdictions and among groups of students. However, each report has often been viewed in isolation from other similar studies. This report is intended to provide an integrated appraisal of the results of the international and national achievement surveys conducted since 1994 but with some references to earlier studies. In addition to limiting the task to manageable proportions, this time span corresponds to the widespread introduction of modern measurement methods so that there is a better basis …

Trialling Of Test Items; Is The Data A Reliable Predictor Of Final Test Performance?, Ross Hudson

Dr Ross Hudson

Trialling is seen as a necessary first step in producing a reliable valid assessment tool. However, how reliable is the trialling result in terms of predicting population test performance?

Where Are You Aiming? Using Learning Outcomes To Guide And Assess Practice, Larry D. Long

Larry D. Long

We have all heard about learning outcomes, but how do we write them and effectively evaluate them? This interactive session provides an overview of learning outcomes, tips, and advice about writing learning outcomes using Learning Reconsidered as a framework. The session also demonstrates how to assess student learning based on learning outcomes.

Turning Data Into Insight: A Data Driven Retention Model, Oscar T. Mcknight, Wenhui Jin

Oscar T McKnight Ph.D.

This poster session addresses how to turn data into insight; that is, when attempting to increasing college retention rates by Student Affairs assessment and intervention. The presentation emphasizes a four part strategy and culminates in demonstrating how to construct a predictive chart or a multivariate computer program; with an overview of both simple and multiple regression models. The ultimate goal is to design interventions that will upset the prediction model and increase student retention.

Print And Digital Reading In Pisa 2009 : Comparison And Contrast, Juliette Mendelovits, Dara Ramalingam, Tom Lumley

Dara Ramalingam

PISA was administered for the fourth time in 2009. Since in each administration, one of reading, maths or science is chosen as the major domain, the 2009 survey marked the first time that a domain (in this case, reading) was revisited as the major focus of the assessment. This allowed a full review of the framework for reading literacy and the inclusion of new elements to reflect the way that reading has changed since 2000 (OECD, 2009). One such change is the increasing prevalence of digital texts. The assessment of digital reading in the PISA 2009 cycle, undertaken by 19 …

Education Assessment In The 21st Century, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

The author argues that there is a need for significant reform in educational assessment. Instead of judging student success only in terms of year-level expectations, assessment needs to recognise the progress that all students can make in their learning, regardless of students' starting points.

Infocommonsreport.Pdf, Berrie Watson

Berrie Watson

Evaluation Of The Assessment And Rating Process Under The National Quality Standard For Early Childhood Education And Care And School Age Care, Sheldon Rothman, David Kelly, Bridie Raban, Mollie Tobin, Jocelyn Cook, Kate O’Malley, Clare Ozolins, Meredith Bramich

Clare Ozolins

This evaluation of the assessment and rating process for early childhood education and care and school age care services had as its focus the validity and reliability of the process. In particular, do the items reviewed with the Assessment and Rating Instrument provide consistent and replicable measures? Would the judgements made by one authorised officer be made by other authorised officers reviewing the same service? Does the process—including use of the Instrument—allow distinctions between rating levels? The evaluation was undertaken by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), which analysed assessment and rating data from both draft and final reports; …

Evaluation Of The Assessment And Rating Process Under The National Quality Standard For Early Childhood Education And Care And School Age Care, Sheldon Rothman, David Kelly, Bridie Raban, Mollie Tobin, Jocelyn Cook, Kate O’Malley, Clare Ozolins, Meredith Bramich

Dr Sheldon Rothman

This evaluation of the assessment and rating process for early childhood education and care and school age care services had as its focus the validity and reliability of the process. In particular, do the items reviewed with the Assessment and Rating Instrument provide consistent and replicable measures? Would the judgements made by one authorised officer be made by other authorised officers reviewing the same service? Does the process—including use of the Instrument—allow distinctions between rating levels? The evaluation was undertaken by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), which analysed assessment and rating data from both draft and final reports; …

Reforming Educational Assessment: Imperatives, Principles And Challenges, Geoff N. Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

AER 57 reviews research into assessment, especially in schools; it analyses the pivotal role of assessment in learning and argues for its reconceptualisation by practitioners and policy makers to better support learning. The genesis of this AER was the ACER Research Conference Assessment and Student Learning: Collecting, interpreting and using data to inform teaching, held in Perth in August 2009. Section 1 outlines some current pressures for assessment reform, introduces the concept of a learning assessment system designed to establish where learners are in their progress within an empirically mapped domain of learning, and sketches a set of design principles …

Large-Scale Group Score Assessments: Past, Present, And Future, B Naemi, E Gonzalez, J Bertling, A Betancourt, J Burrus, P Kyllonen, J Minsky, Petra Lietz, E Klieme, S Vieluf, J Lee, R Roberts

Dr Petra Lietz

he influence of large-scale group score assessments on research, policy, and practice in education has increased dramatically over the past few decades. The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of the value and scope of this program of research. The chapter begins by providing an overview of the history of large-scale assessment. Next, it focuses on current research and development surrounding the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, a government-mandated assessment in the United States) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA, a large-scale survey and assessment commission by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, …

Put Assessment Reform In The Must-Do Basket, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

The reform of assessment thinking and practice has the potential to lead and drive improvements in teaching and learning, but assessment reform is likely to be difficult without broader educational reforms. For example, assessment to establish where individuals are in their learning is largely pointless if teachers intend to deliver exactly the same content to all students in a class regardless of their current levels of achievement.

Print And Digital Reading In Pisa 2009 : Comparison And Contrast, Juliette Mendelovits, Dara Ramalingam, Tom Lumley

Dr Tom Lumley

PISA was administered for the fourth time in 2009. Since in each administration, one of reading, maths or science is chosen as the major domain, the 2009 survey marked the first time that a domain (in this case, reading) was revisited as the major focus of the assessment. This allowed a full review of the framework for reading literacy and the inclusion of new elements to reflect the way that reading has changed since 2000 (OECD, 2009). One such change is the increasing prevalence of digital texts. The assessment of digital reading in the PISA 2009 cycle, undertaken by 19 …

How Well Do Young People Deal With Contradictory And Unreliable Information On Line? What The Pisa Digital Reading Assessment Tells Us, Tom Lumley, Juliette Mendelovits

Dr Tom Lumley

There is sometimes an assumption that young people, as ‘digital natives’, are able to use online information effectively, including selecting and negotiating digital texts that are not only relevant for what they need, but also are likely to provide reliable information. This paper examines the question of how well young people are in fact able to recognise whether information is likely to be trustworthy. While some small-scale work has been done in this area, this paper draws on data from the first large-scale international assessment of online reading, the Digital Reading Assessment (DRA) that was part of the Organisation for …

Class Participation As A Learning And Assessment Strategy In Law: Facilitating Students’ Engagement, Skills Development And Deep Learning, Alex Steel, Anna Huggins, Julian Laurens

Alex Steel

Well designed assessment can be a vehicle for encouraging students to learn and engage more broadly than with the minimums required to complete the assessment activity. In that sense assessment need not merely ‘drive’ earning, but can instead act as a catalyst for further learning beyond what a student had anticipated. In this article we reconsider the potential roles and benefits in legal education of a form of interactive classroom learning we term assessable class participation (ACP), both as part of a pedagogy grounded in assessment and learning theory, and as a platform for developing broader autonomous approaches to learning …

Clarifying Assessment: Developing Official Typologies And Instructions For Forms Of Assessment In Law, Alex Steel

Alex Steel

Law students are expected to complete a range of assessment throughout their degree, and do so with varying levels of success. Increasingly, research has examined the ways in which student performance can be enhanced. While much focus has been on how to best to provide students with feedback that can be acted on, this paper examines the extent to which standardisation of the way in which assessment tasks are described could assist students. The use of the same name to describe different variations of an assessment task can create confusion for students and for new members of staff. Research demonstrates …

‘Works Well With Others’: Examining The Different Types Of Small Group Learning Approaches And Their Implications For Law Student Learning Outcomes, Julian Laurens, Alex Steel, Anna Huggins

Alex Steel

In the current regulatory climate, there is increasing expectation that law schools will be able to demonstrate students’ acquisition of learning outcomes regarding collaboration skills. We argue that this is best achieved through a stepped and structured whole-of-curriculum approach to small group learning. ‘Group work’ provides deep learning and opportunities to develop professional skills, but these benefits are not always realised for law students. An issue is that what is meant by ‘group work’ is not always clear, resulting in a learning regime that may not support the attainment of desired outcomes. This paper describes different types of ‘group work’, …

Evaluation Of The School Centres For Teaching Excellence (Sctes) Initiatives : Final Report, Glenn Rowley, Paul Weldon, Elizabeth Kleinhenz, Lawrence Ingvarson

Dr Elizabeth Kleinhenz

No abstract provided.

Adaptive Testing For Psychological Assessment: How Many Items Are Enough To Run An Adaptive Testing Algorithm?, Michaela Wagner-Menghin, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Although the principles of adaptive testing were established in the psychometric literature many years ago (e.g., Weiss, 1977), and practice of adaptive testing is established in educational assessment, it is not yet widespread in psychological assessment. One obstacle to adaptive psychological testing is a lack of clarity about the necessary number of items to run an adaptive algorithm. The study explores the relationship between item bank size, test length and measurement precision. Simulated adaptive test runs (allowing a maximum of 30 items per person) out of an item bank with 10 items per ability level (covering .5 logits, 150 items …

Learning On The Spot: Site Based Teacher Education In Australia, Elizabeth Kleinhenz

Dr Elizabeth Kleinhenz

In recent years, some Australian schools and universities have been moving away from traditional modes of teacher education in which pre-service teachers typically undertake their practicums in ‘blocks’ of about four weeks a couple of times a year, to newer models in which they become attached to a school, spending at least two days a week there, undertaking extra-curricular duties and participating in a variety of activities so that they become more like a teacher who actually works in that school than a visitor. In some site-based models, neighbouring schools have joined in clusters or partnerships together with the university …

Part 1: Lessons Learnt From International Assessments, Dave Tout

David (Dave) Tout

In the first of two related articles, this article attempts to explain what can be learnt from international assessments of adult literacy and numeracy skills, and why there is value and crucial and important lessons for all educators, and others, from the work underpinning these empirically based research endeavours. Whilst some criticism of the surveys is understandable and to be expected, this often blinds readers and the LLN sector from reading between and behind the lines and seeing what value can be generated, gained and learned from such investigations, data and research. The article describes the theoretical frameworks and quality …

Answering Legal Problem Questions In A Grid Format, Alex Steel, Dominic Fitzsimmons

Alex Steel

The development of legal reasoning skills is a fundamental aspect of legal education. What has sometimes been called “learning to think like a lawyer” is a threshold competency that students must acquire before they can progress to more complex analysis of broader legal issues. This chapter discusses the use of problem-based scenarios to both engage students and to develop legal analysis. It outlines the threshold difficulties students must overcome in order to read texts as a lawyer and explains how use of a grid format answer – rather than an essay format – can both assist students to overcome these …