Phonological awareness plays a key role in learning to read; therefore, its assessment has received a lot of attention. Research in the domain of phonological awareness has been characterized by attempts to develop reliable and valid assessment tools for diverse populations. Over the past few decades, phonological awareness assessment has gone…

To solve the attenuation paradox in computerized adaptive testing (CAT), this study proposes an item selection method, the integer programming approach based on real-time test data (IPRD), to improve test efficiency. The IPRD method turns information regarding the ability distribution of the population from real-time test data into feasible test…

Technology has become a fundamental means to encourage reliable and more effective assessments. Rapid technological developments have led to the widespread use of digital platforms and devices in all aspects of life. Educational institutions worldwide had to take advantage of this technological leap during pandemics such as COVID-19, which changed…

Motivation to read is crucial to improving reading skill. While there is extensive research examining reading motivation among elementary students, with respect to adolescents, research is limited. Employing a person-centered approach can aid in developing a better understanding of adolescent reading motivation and would help address possible…

Cheating in online exams without face-to-face proctoring has been a general concern for academic instructors during the crisis caused by COVID-19. The main goal of this work is to evaluate the cost of these dishonest practices by comparing the academic performance of webcam-proctored students and their unproctored peers in an online gradable test.…

Distance learning frees the learning process from spatial constraints. Each mode of distance learning, including synchronous and asynchronous learning, has disadvantages. In synchronous learning, students have network bandwidth and noise concerns, but in asynchronous learning, they have fewer opportunities for engagement, such as asking questions.…

In automated essay scoring (AES), essays are automatically graded without human raters. Many AES models based on various manually designed features or various architectures of deep neural networks (DNNs) have been proposed over the past few decades. Each AES model has unique advantages and characteristics. Therefore, rather than using a single-AES…

The study presents multivariate sequential monitoring procedures for examining test-taking behaviors online. The procedures monitor examinee's responses and response times and signal aberrancy as soon as significant change is identifieddetected in the test-taking behavior. The study in particular proposes three schemes to track different…

In the late 1960s, when federal officials and eminent psychologists were first designing the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), they probably never contemplated testing students younger than nine. The technology for mass testing at the time--bubble sheets and No. 2 pencils--only worked if students could read the instructions and…

In recent years, online learning has received more attention than ever before. One of the most challenging aspects of online education is the students' assessment since academic integrity could be violated due to various cheating behaviors in online examinations. Although a considerable number of literature reviews exist about online learning,…

Manual composition of tasks and exams is a challenging and time-consuming task. Especially when exams are taken remotely without the personal monitoring by examiners, most exams can easily lose their integrity with the use of previously done exercises or student communication. This research introduces an approach that incorporates the principles…

No solution can ultimately eliminate cheating in online courses. However, universities reserve funding for authentication systems to minimize the threat of cheating in online courses. Most higher education institutions use a combination of authentication methods to secure systems against impersonation attacks during online examinations.…

Recent developments in computerized scoring via semantic distance have provided automated assessments of verbal creativity. Here, we extend past work, applying computational linguistic approaches to characterize salient features of creative text. We hypothesize that, in addition to semantic diversity, the degree to which a story includes…

Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are widely used in digital learning systems, as they allow for automating the assessment process. However, owing to the increased digital literacy of students and the advent of social media platforms, MCQ tests are widely shared online, and teachers are continuously challenged to create new questions, which is an…

Automated Essay Scoring (AES) is a well-studied problem in Natural Language Processing applied in education. Solutions vary from handcrafted linguistic features to large Transformer-based models, implying a significant effort in feature extraction and model implementation. We introduce a novel Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) pipeline…