Examining the Psychometric Properties of the Standards Assessment Inventory

The purpose of this article is to assess the psychometric properties of the Standards Assessment Inventory (SAI) in order to confirm its construct validity using modern statistical procedures. The SAI is a 50-item assessment designed to measure the degree to which professional development programs align with seven factors related to “high quality” teacher learning (Learning Forward, 2011). These seven factors are Learning Communities, Leadership, Resources, Data, Learning Design, Implementation, and Outcomes. In their original evaluation of the factor structure of the SAI, Learning Forward (2011) tested one model containing all 50 items loading onto a single factor, and seven individual factor models, each containing one of the seven standards of professional development. To date there has been no published report related to the psychometric properties of a seven-factor model, which allows each of the seven standards to covary. The initial test of this model produced a poor fit, after which a series of modifications were attempted to improve the functioning of the SAI. After all meaningful modifications were added, the overall fit of the SAI was still outside of a range that would suggest a statistically valid measurement model. Suggestions for SAI modification and use are made as they relate to these findings.

Learner-Centered Pedagogies

This chapter is a critical review of conventional and not so conventional Student-Centered Learning (SCL) pedagogies. Additionally, in the African context, educational institutions have been caught up in a theoretical approach to teaching and learning, characterized by a desire to pass examinations. Consequently, this approach leads to surface learning as opposed to deep learning. Hence, teaching and learning outcomes lack quality and definitely fails to meet and promote skills required by the fast changing modern and postmodern global world. To address this need, this chapter examines the following: Overview of SCL pedagogies; Conventional and not so Conventional SCL pedagogies; Implications for SCL pedagogies to learners, instructors, curriculum, and assessment. Finally, this chapter examines the misconceptions and advantages of adopting SCL in the light of learners and instructors.

Assessment Shouldn't Be a Pay-Per-View Activity

This chapter begins with a consideration of the state of school-based assessments as an unavoidable consequence of the contemporary societal emphasis on accountability and curricular prescriptions at the state and national level in the United States of America. Additionally, the authors comment upon the potential inaccuracies inescapable in large scale, high-stakes, standardized assessment instruments, especially when such instruments are turned to the task of evaluation—whether norm- or criterion-referenced—in a teaching and learning engagement. Likewise, the chapter concludes with suggestions and templates (elaborately configured with specific activities and assessment rubrics included) to support teachers who want to develop their own, rigorous, valid, and reliable assessments instruments embedded seamlessly in student-centered learning activities, and that accommodate the reality of literacy as a culturally situated behavior that, for contemporary learners, includes all manner of meaning-making in all manner of modalities from the pencil and paper to the purely electronic (and potentially wordless, at times) video- or audio-based.

Collaborative Calibrated Peer Assessment in Massive Open Online Courses

The free nature and open access courses in the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) allow the facilities of disseminating information for a large number of participants. However, the “massive” propriety can generate many pedagogical problems, such as the assessment of learners, which is considered as the major difficulty facing in the MOOC. In fact, the immense number of learners who exceeded in some MOOC the hundreds of thousands make the instructors' evaluation of students' production quite impossible. In this work, the authors present a new approach for assessing the learners' production in MOOC. This approach combines the peer assessment with the collaborative learning and the calibrated method. It aims at increasing the degree of trust in peer-assessment. For evaluating the proposed approach, the authors implemented a MOOC dedicated for learning algorithms. In addition, an experiment was conducted during two months for knowing the effects of the proposed approach. The obtained results are presented in this paper. They are judged as very interesting and encouraging.

Pedagogical Mini-Games Integrated into Hybrid Course to Improve Understanding of Computer Programming

To improve learning efficiency in Computer Programming courses, a voluntary decision was to fully integrate different learner-centered pedagogical devices. The result is the development of a set of pedagogical serious mini-Games (mGs) in synchronous time in the classroom for a decided scenario of the hybrid course. Supported by a Learning Management System, the innovation results in a common flexible and modular framework for mGs, taking into account a really short duration and higher constraints of the training. The expected outcome is to make future end users (who will not be IT developers) aware of the potential of the underlying transversal skills developed while building up universal algorithms, stressing functional analysis regardless of specific expertise required for a given coding. The challenge is to make their knowledge ownership easier, to prevent rejection, to incent involvement and collective intelligence and further Agile method adoption with a concern for quality.

Assessment in the Modern Age

This chapter aims to address assessment in the modern age in terms of its importance, challenges and solutions by examining the views of 1,423 users at UK test centres following their recent experience of using two systems which employ computer-based assessment (CBA) and computer-assisted assessment (CAA). Generally speaking, based on the research, which informs the findings presented in this chapter, both systems face similar challenges but there are challenges which are specific to the CAA system. Similarly, both systems may require common solutions to improve user's future experience, but there are solutions which are more relevant to the CAA system. The chapter concludes with a discussion around the UK apprenticeship and a case study of a pilot apprenticeship programme in which CBA and CAA are also integrated.

Intelligent Adaptable e-Assessment for Inclusive e-Learning

Access to education is one of the main human rights. Everyone should have access to education and be capable of benefiting from it. However there are a number who are excluded, not because of a lack of ability but simply because they have a disability or specific need which current education systems do not address. A learning system in which content, tools and interfaces can be personalised and adapted to the individual needs and preferences of a variety of learners, including those with disabilities, becomes inclusive. Assessment is an integral part of an e-learning environment and therefore it has to provide not only inclusive e-learning content but also inclusive e-assessment. The proposed research investigates an intelligent adaptable e-learning system for assessing students' level of skill, knowledge and understanding regardless of their disabilities or accessibility needs. It is based on an innovative use of world's first open source adaptable widget design and authoring toolkit (WIDGaT) as the prototyping environment.

E-Assessment System for Open and Short Answer (Applied to a Course of Arabic Grammar in 7th Year in Tunisia)

The goal of this article is the development of an evaluation system based on the Arabic language. This article contains four parts. The first part is the corpus construction from the 7th year basic education classes' grammar book in Tunisia. Then, the second part is on the construction of the Concept Maps (CMaps) ontological for simple Arabic sentences from this corpus, where the automatic extraction of terms is completed. This extraction is based on two major approaches: linguistic and statistical. The third part in this article is the automatic instantiation. The last part is devoted to the application of the similarity measure chosen in the CMaps ontological fusion, which summarizes the various semantic links and which ends with a judgment according to the calculated score.

Assessing the Non-Cognitive Domains

Good assessment assures attainment and drives learning. In vocational and practical programmes, the important learning outcomes are non-cognitive skills and attitudes - for example, dexterity, situational awareness, professionalism, compassion, or resilience. Unfortunately, these domains are much more difficult to assess. There are three main reasons. First, the constructs themselves are tacit - making them difficult to define. Second, performance is highly variable and situation-specific. Third, significant assessor judgement is required to differentiate between good and poor performance, and this brings subjectivity. The chapter reviews seven existing strategies for addressing these problems: delineating the constructs, using cognitive assessments as a proxy, making the subjective objective, sampling across performances and opinions, using outcome measures as a proxy, using meta-cognition as a proxy, and abandoning the existing measurement paradigm. Given the limitations of these strategies, the author finishes by offering three promising ways forward.

Demonstrating Positive, Learner-Centred Assessment Practice in Professional Development Programmes

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the role that professional development programmes for higher education lecturers and teachers can play in promoting positive, learner-centred assessment practice. Whilst they vary in their coverage, these programmes address a broad range of teaching, learning and other pedagogical issues, and almost all include assessment and good assessment practice as a key component of their curriculum. Therefore, this chapter is used to explain and argue that professional development programmes can and should have a key and distinctive role in developing and sharing innovative assessment practice. The argument is supported by drawing on series of seven principles and ideas, as well as a single-institution case study. Points and arguments are also supported with a range of theory, literature and examples, as well as the experience of the author in working on one programme of this type.