For online learning and other forms of distance learning, time management is vital. As a recognized social asset, time constitutes a consistent and complete new approach to online higher education. Assessment and Evaluation of Time Factors in Online Teaching and Learning combines empirical and methodological research to study the role of time comprehensively from an institutional and management perspective, a technological perspective, and a pedagogical perspective. Focusing on higher education, this book is aimed at educational researchers, social science researchers, teachers, and students interested in improving the learning process and experience.

This book advocates that teachers should play an active role in high-stakes language testing and that more weight should be given to teacher judgement. This is likely to increase the formative potential of high-stakes tests and provide teachers with a sense of ownership. The implication is that the knowledge and skills they develop by being involved in these tests will feed into their own classroom practices. The book also considers the arguments against teacher involvement, e.g. the contention that teacher involvement might entrench the practice of teaching to the test, or that teachers should not be actively involved in high-stakes language testing because their judgement is insufficiently reliable. Using contributions from a wide range of international educational contexts, the book proposes that a lack of reliability in teacher judgement is best addressed by means of training and not by barring educators from participating in high-stakes language testing. It also argues that their involvement in testing helps teachers to bolster confidence in their own judgement and develop their assessment literacy. Moreover, teacher involvement empowers them to play a role in reforming high-stakes language testing so that it is more equitable and more likely to enhance classroom practices. High-stakes language tests that adopt such an inclusive approach facilitate more effective learning on the part of teachers, which ultimately benefits all their students.

This book provides a comprehensive and engaging analysis of the purpose and function of student evaluation in higher education. It explores its foundations and the emerging functions, as well as its future potential to improve the quality of university teaching and student learning. The book systematically assesses the core assumptions underpinning the design of student evaluation models as a tool to improve the quality of teaching. It also analyses the emerging influence of student opinion as a key metric and a powerful proxy for assuring the quality of teachers, teaching and courses in universities. Using the voices of teachers in the day-to-day practices of higher education, the book also explores the actual perceptions held by academics about student evaluation. It offers the first real attempt to critically analyse the developing influence of student evaluation on contemporary approaches to academic teaching. Using a practice-based perspective and the powerful explanatory potential of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), the implications of the changing focus in the use of the student voice - from development to measurement - are systematically explored and assessed. Importantly, using the evidence provided by a unique series of practice-based case studies, the book also offers powerful new insights into how the student voice can be reconceptualised to more effectively improve the quality of teaching, curriculum and assessment. Based on this empirical analysis, a series of practical strategies are proposed to enhance the work of student evaluation in the future university to drive pedagogical innovation. This unique volume provides those interested in student evaluation with a more complex understanding of the development, contemporary function and future potential of the student voice. It also demonstrates how the student voice - in combination with professional dialogue - can be used to encourage more powerful and substantial forms of pedagogical improvement and academic development in higher education environments.

This book offers a moral rather than instrumental notion of university education whilst locating the university within society. It reflects a balancing of the instrumentalization of higher education as a mode of employment training and enhances the notion of the students' well-being being at the core of the university mission. Compassion is examined in this volume as a weaving of diverse cultures and beliefs into a way of recognizing that diversity through a common good offers a way of preparing students and staff for a complex and anxious world. This book provides theoretical and practical discussions of compassion in higher education, it draws contributors from around the world and offers illustrations of compassion in action through a number of international cases studies..

English-medium universities around the world face real challenges in ensuring that incoming students have the language and literacy skills they need to cope with the demands of their degree programmes. One response has been a variety of institutional initiatives to assess students after admission, in order to identify those with significant needs and advise them on how to enhance their academic language ability. This volume brings together papers from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Oman, South Africa and the United States, written by language assessment specialists who discuss issues in the design and implementation of these post-admission assessments in their own institutions. A major theme running through the book is the need to evaluate the validity of such assessments not just on their technical quality but on their impact, in terms of giving students access to effective means of developing their language skills and ultimately enhancing their academic achievement.

This book is the outcome of a research symposium sponsored by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology [AECT]. Consisting of twenty-four chapters, including an introduction and conclusion, it argues that informational content should not be the main element of education, and that to provide more for learners, it is necessary to go beyond content and address other skills and capabilities. It also discusses the false premise that learning is complete when the information is known, not when learners seek more: their own directions, answers, and ideas. The authors assert that the ability to synthesize, solve problems and generate ideas is not based on specific content, although education often focuses solely on teaching content. Further, they state that content can be separated from the learning process and that instructional design and educational technology must be about the skills, habits, and beliefs to be learned.

Designed to help middle and high school teachers, as well as students new to the rigor of college, Studying and Learning in a High Stakes World incorporates test preparation into classrooms without asking teachers to "teach to the test." Instead, it enables teachers to focus on course content while simultaneously providing high quality, scaffolded study strategies. Whether they are facing a high stakes exam, or merely preparing students for a chapter quiz, the strategies modeled in this book allow teachers to "use" tests as platforms for students' learning. This book is divided into three parts that address how to: *Get students organized and in the right frame of mind to study, learn, and take tests *Study for essay and objective tests *Answer essay and objective questions and take tests Studying and Learning features close learning strategies, ESL Best Practices, and alignment to the Common Core State Standards in order to help teachers make tests work for them.

This book explores curricular, teaching and learning practices in schools in England and in higher education institutions, and considers the damaging effects of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) for UK higher education institutions, international comparative assessment systems such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and broadly, how educational judgements are now made about educational matters. David Scott criticizes the implementation of neo-liberal policies and practices in education systems round the world, management and control system approaches, and empiricist/positivist research agendas. The book offers an account of a new education model, which is directly in opposition to agendas currently supported by the right of the political spectrum. It will be of interest to teachers and students of education, the education research community, practising and trainee teachers, and education policy makers.

Gordon shows how we can use assessment to support teaching and develop students' competencies. Between 2011 and 2013, Gordon chaired an interdisciplinary commission of scholars and thinkers, who connected transformative research and ideas on learning, teaching, measurement, the nature of tests, intelligence, capability, technology, and policy.

This book introduces a comprehensive RTP Model that reframes research to practice knowledge and inclusive education philosophy to promote the sustained use of research to promote and enhance meaningful education for all students.

How can assessment practices be used to assist and improve the learning process? ""Self, Peer and Group Assessment in E-Learning"" attempts to answer this question by bringing together 13 contributions from prominent researchers and practitioners actively involved in all aspects of self, peer and group assessment in an online or e-learning environment. It describes the principal characteristics of self, peer and group assessment, and presents guidelines for effective implementation, highlighting both benefits and problems. It also provides examples in a variety of subject areas from secondary school students in different countries, large undergraduate classes, and Master's level courses. The primary aim of ""Self, Peer and Group Assessment in E-Learning"" is to encourage the development of higher-quality learning and assessment practices, ones in which the learners themselves assume a greater responsibility for, and play a more active role in, their own learning.

Eugene J. Meehan's immediate purpose in this study is to explain the essentials of a promising approach to measuring and improving cognitive performance, and to summarize the exceptional results obtained thus far from years of experimental applications in the United States and abroad. The approach depends upon two primary constructs: first, a concept labeled cognitive skill or cognitive competence, which is identified with the individual's capacity to acquire, assess, and apply knowledge; and second, a theory of knowledge that is limited in scope but focused on the development and use of knowledge in the conduct of human affairs. Meehan's extended purpose, the reason for being concerned with measuring and improving cognitive competence, is the glaring inadequacy of intellectual performance of those educated in the United States and elsewhere, compared to current needs. This study details the strong theoretical base, examines the process of testing cognitive skill, and investigates the relationship between cognitive skill and real-world achievement. Meehan argues that a useful measure of the concept of cognitive skill testing can be created and stabilized, and that the skills included can be improved selectively and systematically. The book concludes with a discussion of the principal areas of uncertainty, including the long-range effects of cognitive training and the factors that influence retention--particularly in societies that maintain a generally anti-intellectual environment, or where methodological and analytical criticism is not a regular part of everyday practice, even among the well-educated. The significant research, testing, and results which show actual progress in improving educational practice as detailed in this book will interest methodologists, educators, and social scientists.

This book is a useful guide for the teaching fraternity, administrators and education technology professionals to make good use of AI across outcome-based technical education (OBTE) ecosystem and infuse innovations and affordable digital technologies to traditional pedagogic processes to make teaching-learning more independent of human factor (teacher/student quality), time and place and at the same time more impactful and enjoyable for the learners. Providing access to the digital media and learning tools (even to the extent of mobile apps) to the students would allow them to keep pace with innovations in learning technologies, learn according to their own pace and improve their understanding level and have instantaneous feedback and evaluation. The book explores these new challenges and scope of using computational intelligence in educational technology. The book also addresses how based on the data collected from the outcome of conventional educational system, intelligent diagnostic and feedback system is developed which will change the teaching strategies and corresponding teaching-learning process. The book covers a wider framework of digital pedagogy and its intelligent applications on various sectors of education system.

This second volume of papers from the ATC21STM project deals with the development of an assessment and teaching system of 21st century skills. Readers are guided through a detailed description of the methods used in this process. The first volume was published by Springer in 2012 (Griffin, P., McGaw, B. & Care, E., Eds., Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills, Dordrecht: Springer). The major elements of this new volume are the identification and description of two 21st century skills that are amenable to teaching and learning: collaborative problem solving, and learning in digital networks. Features of the skills that need to be mirrored in their assessment are identified so that they can be reflected in assessment tasks. The tasks are formulated so that reporting of student performance can guide implementation in the classroom for use in teaching and learning. How simple tasks can act as platforms for development of 21st century skills is demonstrated, with the concurrent technical infrastructure required for its support. How countries with different languages and cultures participated and contributed to the development process is described. The psychometric qualities of the online tasks developed are reported, in the context of the robustness of the automated scoring processes. Finally, technical and educational issues to be resolved in global projects of this nature are outlined.

This book explores the application of an innovative assessment approach known as Dynamic Assessment (DA) to academic writing assessment, as developed within the Vygotskian sociocultural theory of learning. DA blends instruction with assessment by targeting and further developing students' Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The book presents the application of DA to assessing academic writing by developing a set of DA procedures for academic writing teachers. It further demonstrates the application of Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), combined with DA, to track undergraduate business management students' academic writing and conceptual development in distance education. This work extends previous DA studies in three key ways: i) it explicitly focuses on the construction of a macrogenre (whole text) as opposed to investigations of decontextualized language fragments, ii) it offers the first in-depth application of the powerful SFL tool to analyse students' academic writing to track their academic writing trajectory in DA research, and iii) it identifies a range of mediational strategies and consequently expands Poehner's (2005) framework of mediation typologies. Dynamic Assessment of Students' Academic Writing will be of great value to academic writing researchers and teachers, language assessment researchers and postgraduate students interested in academic writing, alternative assessment and formative feedback in higher education.

This collection of articles from Educational Leadership pulls together some of the best pieces on formative assessment and feedback that will help educators understand how to best use the data they have at their fingertips. The authors tell fellow educators about how to use formative assessment to shape the next phase of instruction and how to look for patterns in students' assessments and assignments-the mistakes students frequently make and the signals that tell what individuals need, what groups of kids need, and what the whole class needs.

This book traces how a new school, physically designed as a modern learning environment, has come into being in New Zealand. A key feature is how it designs its curriculum for future citizens. The book explores how flexible curriculum and assessment options support the provision of a well-balanced, coherent and future-oriented learning programme. It also illustrates how the school is implementing its vision and copes with being different from other schools which understand and embody the New Zealand Curriculum as well as the NCEA qualifications system in more traditional terms. School leaders', teachers' and foundation students' thinking and perspectives about what it's like to become a new school are highlighted and shed light on what is possible within an evolving education system.

This book adopts a multi-method and multi-phase approach to investigate the washback effects of Test for English Majors (TEM) on program administrators, teachers and students, shedding new light on TEM reform and the reform of English teaching and learning in China. TEM, a nationwide test used to measure the language proficiency of undergraduate English majors in China, is a major standardized test taken by nearly 400,000 students every year. The book's key features include: an in-depth discussion of the nature of washback and a framework for investigating it; a multi-method and multi-phase approach, employing both the quantitative method of questionnaire surveys and the qualitative methods of interviews and classroom observations; large-scale questionnaire surveys conducted among experts, program administrators, teachers and students, and involving over 30,000 participants; detailed assessments of TEM's washback effects on stakeholders' perceptions, classroom teaching practice, students learning activities, etc.; and essential insights into testing and teaching reforms.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This open access book examines the modern role of the European School system within the European Union, at a time when the global economy demands a new vision for contemporary education. The European schools are currently in a state of crisis: their 60-year-old tradition of bilingual and multilingual education is being strained by rapid EU expansion and the removal of English speaking teachers as a result of Brexit. Their tried and tested model of mathematics and science education has rapidly been overtaken by new developments in pedagogy and assessment research, while recruitment and retention of students and teachers has become increasingly fraught as European member states review what they are, and what they are not, prepared to fund. The authors draw on original and empirical research to assess the European Schools' place in a new Europe where the entire post-war European Project is potentially at risk. This well-researched volume will be of interest to practitioners working in European schools as well as students and scholars of EU politics and international education.

Give students the repeated practice they need to master the reading skill of using context clues, and succeed on tests! Each of the 35 reproducible pages features a high-interest fiction and nonfiction reading passage with bubble-test practice questions that target this essential comprehension reading skill. Flexible and easy to use--in school or at home--the book also includes model lessons, pre- and post-assessments, and an answer key.

This book offers a coherent research-based overview and analysis of theories and practices in using data to improve student learning. It clarifies what 'use of data' means and differentiates the different levels of decision-making in education (relating to the system, district, school, classroom, or individual student). The relationship between data and decision-making is considered and various movements in the use of data to improve student learning are analysed, especially from the perspective of their assumptions and effects. This leads to a focus on effective educational decision-making as a social process requiring collaboration among all relevant participants. It also requires a clear understanding of educational aims, and these are seen to transcend what can be assessed by standardised tests. The consequences of this analysis for decision processes are explored and conclusions are drawn about what principles might best guide educational practice as well as what ambiguities remain. Throughout, the focus is on what existing research says about each of the issues explored.

This book reports on an innovative study into the first five years of mathematics teaching: FIRSTMATH. For the first time, the study has developed a viable methodology to analyze the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of beginning mathematics teachers as well as instruments to explore the contexts where they work. The book provides a step by step account of this exploratory (proof-of-concept) research study, using a comparative and international approach, and introduces readers to the challenges entailed. The FIRSTMATH study promises the development of methods and strategies to make it possible for teacher educators and future teachers to examine (and improve on) their own practices in an important STEM area.

This book provides a detailed description of research and application outcomes from the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills project, which explored a framework for understanding the nature of these skills. The major element of this new volume is the presentation of research information from the global assessment of two 21st century skills that are amenable to teaching and learning: collaborative problem solving, and learning in digital networks. The outcomes presented include evidence to support the validity of assessment of 21st century skills and descriptions of consequent pedagogical approaches which can be used both to teach the skills and to use them to enhance key learning goals in secondary education systems. The sections of the volume are connected through a focus on the degree to which innovative assessment tasks measure the constructs of interest. This focus is informed by conceptual and methodological issues associated with affordances of 21st century computer-based assessment. How understanding of the nature of the skills, as derived from these assessments, can guide approaches to the integration of 21st century skills in the classroom, is informed by initiatives adopted by participating countries. The guiding questions in this volume are: "Do the assessment tasks measure the constructs?" and "What are the implications for assessment and teaching in the classroom?" It is the third volume of papers from this project published by Springer.

This book aims to make a contribution to the theory, research and practice on quality and equity in education by providing a comprehensive overview of these two dimensions of educational effectiveness and proposing a methodological instrument that may be used to measure the contribution that each school can make to promoting equity. The importance of using this instrument is demonstrated by analysing results of various effectiveness studies conducted over the last decade. The book draws upon research across the world, especially research conducted in the Europe, the United States, and Australasia. It is shown that promoting equity has no negative effect on the promotion of quality. The importance of using this methodological instrument to identify factors that promote both quality and equity at different educational levels (i.e. teacher, school and educational system) is stressed. The book also demonstrates how we can measure stability and changes in the effectiveness status of schools over time in terms of fostering quality and equity. In addition it underlines the importance of identifying factors measuring changes in the effectiveness status of schools in terms of equity and points to the alternative strategies that can be used at school and system level. In our attempt to encourage the further development and use of this methodology for school improvement purposes, we demonstrate how experimental studies can be conducted to discover whether and under which conditions the proposed methodology can help schools promote both quality and equity. Finally, implications for school evaluation, research, educational policy and practice are drawn. In this way, the book contributes significantly to the debate on how quality and equity can be achieved and encourages policy-makers and practitioners not to view these two dimensions of effectiveness as being in competition with each other but as constituting the major objectives of any reform policy and/or improvement effort at school and/or national levels.