Instructional design (ID), also known as instructional systems design and originally known as instructional systems development (ISD), is the practice of systematically designing, developing and delivering instructional materials and experiences, both digital and physical, in a consistent and reliable fashion toward an efficient, effective, appealing, engaging and inspiring acquisition of knowledge. The process consists broadly of determining the state and needs of the learner, defining the end goal of instruction, and creating some "intervention" to assist in the transition. The outcome of this instruction may be directly observable and scientifically measured or completely hidden and assumed. There are many instructional design models, but many are based on the ADDIE model with the five phases: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.
Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private educational testing and assessment organization. It is headquartered in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, but has a Princeton address.
Educational assessment or educational evaluation is the systematic process of documenting and using empirical data on the knowledge, skill, attitudes, aptitude and beliefs to refine programs and improve student learning. Assessment data can be obtained from directly examining student work to assess the achievement of learning outcomes or can be based on data from which one can make inferences about learning. Assessment is often used interchangeably with test, but not limited to tests. Assessment can focus on the individual learner, the learning community, a course, an academic program, the institution, or the educational system as a whole. The word "assessment" came into use in an educational context after the Second World War.
Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is a form of computer-based test that adapts to the examinee's ability level. For this reason, it has also been called tailored testing. In other words, it is a form of computer-administered test in which the next item or set of items selected to be administered depends on the correctness of the test taker's responses to the most recent items administered.
Gwyneth M. Boodoo is an American psychologist and expert on educational measurement.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest continuing and nationally representative assessment of what U.S. students know and can do in various subjects. NAEP is a congressionally mandated project administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the United States Department of Education. The first national administration of NAEP occurred in 1969. The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) is an independent, bipartisan board that sets policy for NAEP and is responsible for developing the framework and test specifications.The National Assessment Governing Board, whose members are appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Education, includes governors, state legislators, local and state school officials, educators, business representatives, and members of the general public. Congress created the 26-member Governing Board in 1988.
The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing is a set of testing standards developed jointly by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME).
Formative assessment, formative evaluation, formative feedback, or assessment for learning, including diagnostic testing, is a range of formal and informal assessment procedures conducted by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment. The goal of a formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work. It also helps faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately. It typically involves qualitative feedback for both student and teacher that focuses on the details of content and performance. It is commonly contrasted with summative assessment, which seeks to monitor educational outcomes, often for purposes of external accountability.
The Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory, is a psychological theory on the structure of human cognitive abilities. Based on the work of three psychologists, Raymond B. Cattell, John L. Horn and John B. Carroll, the Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory is regarded as an important theory in the study of human intelligence. Based on a large body of research, spanning over 70 years, Carroll's Three Stratum theory was developed using the psychometric approach, the objective measurement of individual differences in abilities, and the application of factor analysis, a statistical technique which uncovers relationships between variables and the underlying structure of concepts such as 'intelligence'. The psychometric approach has consistently facilitated the development of reliable and valid measurement tools and continues to dominate the field of intelligence research.
Cognitive skills, also called cognitive functions, cognitive abilities or cognitive capacities, are skills of the mind, as opposed to other types of skills such as motor skills. Some examples of cognitive skills are literacy, self-reflection, logical reasoning, abstract thinking, critical thinking, introspection and mental arithmetic. Cognitive skills vary in processing complexity, and can range from more fundamental processes such as perception and various memory functions, to more sophisticated processes such as decision making, problem solving and metacognition.
Norman “Fritz” Frederiksen (1909-1998) was an American research psychologist and leading proponent of performance assessment, an approach to educational and occupational testing that focused on the use of tasks similar to the ones individuals actually encounter in real classroom and work environments. In keeping with the philosophy underlying this approach, Frederiksen was a critic of multiple-choice testing, which he felt negatively influenced school curricula and classroom practice. Much of his research centered upon creating and evaluating alternative approaches to the measurement of knowledge and skill, which he pursued over a 40-year career at Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, NJ. For his work, he received the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Knowledge in 1984 and, by the time of his retirement from ETS, had attained the position of Distinguished Scientist, the organization's highest-ranking scientific title at that time.
Adaptive comparative judgement is a technique borrowed from psychophysics which is able to generate reliable results for educational assessment – as such it is an alternative to traditional exam script marking. In the approach, judges are presented with pairs of student work and are then asked to choose which is better, one or the other. By means of an iterative and adaptive algorithm, a scaled distribution of student work can then be obtained without reference to criteria.
Automated essay scoring (AES) is the use of specialized computer programs to assign grades to essays written in an educational setting. It is a form of educational assessment and an application of natural language processing. Its objective is to classify a large set of textual entities into a small number of discrete categories, corresponding to the possible grades, for example, the numbers 1 to 6. Therefore, it can be considered a problem of statistical classification.
ACT, Inc. is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, primarily known for the ACT, a standardized test designed to assess high school students' academic achievement and college readiness. For the U.S. high school graduating class of 2019, 52 percent of graduates had taken the ACT test; the more than 1.78 million students included virtually all high school graduates in 17 states.
Michael J. Hannafin was professor of instructional technology and director of Learning and Performance Support Laboratory at the University of Georgia. He obtained a Ph.D. in educational technology from the Arizona State University. Along with Kyle Peck, he developed the field of computer-aided instruction as distinguished from computer-based instruction. He received the AERA SIG- IT Best Paper Award in 2007.
The National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) is a U.S. based professional organization for assessment, evaluation, testing, and other aspects of educational measurement. NCME was launched in 1938 and previously operated under the name National Council on Measurements Used in Education.
Lynn Fuchs is an educational psychologist known for research on instructional practice and assessment, reading disabilities, and mathematics disabilities. She is the Dunn Family Chair in Psychoeducational Assessment in the Department of Special Education at Vanderbilt University.
Alina Anca von Davier is a psychometrician and researcher in computational psychometrics, machine learning, and education. Von Davier is a researcher, innovator, and an executive leader with over 20 years of experience in EdTech and in the assessment industry. She is the Chief of Assessment at Duolingo, where she leads the Duolingo English Test research and development area. She is also the Founder and CEO of EdAstra Tech, a service-oriented EdTech company. In 2022, she joined the University of Oxford as an Honorary Research Fellow, and Carnegie Mellon University as a Senior Research Fellow.
Mark Daniel Reckase is an educational psychologist and expert on quantitative methods and measurement who is known for his work on computerized adaptive testing, multidimensional item response theory, and standard setting in educational and psychological tests. Reckase is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the College of Education at Michigan State University.
Jacqueline P. Leighton is a Canadian-Chilean educational psychologist, academic and author. She is a full professor in the Faculty of Education as well as vice-dean of Faculty Development and Faculty Affairs at the University of Alberta.
