Alignment of Mathematics State-Level Standards and Assessments: The Role of Reviewer Agreement

This article examines the role of reviewer agreement in judgments about alignment between tests and standards. We used case data from three state alignment studies to explore how different approaches to incorporating reviewer agreement changes alignment conclusions. The three case studies showed varying degrees of reviewer agreement about correspondences between objectives and test items. Moreover, taking into account reviewer agreement in the analyses sometimes had a marked effect on alignment conclusions. We discuss reasons for differences across case studies and alignment approaches, as well as implications for future alignment efforts.     

Assessing Students' Opportunity to Learn: Teacher and Student Perspectives

How can we assess the opportunity that students have to learn the material they find on tests? How do students' perceptions of opportunity to learn differ from their teachers?     

Humanoid robots in higher education: Evaluating the acceptance of Pepper in the context of an academic writing course using the UTAUT

This study investigates the acceptance of social robots by higher education students in the social sciences. Pepper, a humanoid social robot from SoftBank Robotics, provided a sample of its capabilities during a first semester, large-scale, university course, “Introduction to academic writing.”From this course, 462 freshmen participated in our survey. The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) acts as the conceptual framework, and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) as the method for data analysis. The four perceived characteristics—trustworthiness, adaptiveness, social presence and appearance—all predict the intention to use the robot for learning purposes; anxiety regarding making mistakes in handling the robot and about privacy issues are not significant predictors. An importance-performance map analysis indicated adaptiveness as the robot’s most important characteristic for predicting student behavioural intention. Overall, however, the study shows that students do not have the intention to rely on social robots for learning purposes at the current level of state-of-the-art technology: behavioural intention reaches only 36.6% of the theoretical maximum.     

Determination of the centre of mass kinematics in alpine skiing using differential global navigation satellite systems

In the sport of alpine skiing, knowledge about the centre of mass (CoM) kinematics (i.e. position, velocity and acceleration) is essential to better understand both performance and injury. This study proposes a global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-based method to measure CoM kinematics without restriction of capture volume and with reasonable set-up and processing requirements. It combines the GNSS antenna position, terrain data and the accelerations acting on the skier in order to approximate the CoM location, velocity and acceleration. The validity of the method was assessed against a reference system (video-based 3D kinematics) over 12 turn cycles on a giant slalom skiing course. The mean (± s) position, velocity and acceleration differences between the CoM obtained from the GNSS and the reference system were 9 ± 12 cm, 0.08 ± 0.19 m · s^-1 and 0.22 ± 1.28 m · s^-2, respectively. The velocity and acceleration differences obtained were smaller than typical differences between the measures of several skiers on the same course observed in the literature, while the position differences were slightly larger than its discriminative meaningful change. The proposed method can therefore be interpreted to be technically valid and adequate for a variety of biomechanical research questions in the field of alpine skiing with certain limitations regarding position.     

Teaching for analogical transfer as a means of improving problem-solving,thinking and learning

Analogical transfer is transfer of a basic structure acquired through one or more instances to another instance. A basic structure like this is sometimes called a paradigm. Paradigmatic teaching, i.e. teaching for analogical transfer, requires the teaching of a basic structure by appropriate exemplars as well as the teaching of its application in various fields and contexts. This is demonstrated using research on teaching for problem-solving, inductive thinking, and learning-to-leam.Invited paper presented at the joint meeting of the Dutch Research Association on Instructional Processes (OTG), the German Division for Empirical Educational Research (AEPF) of the German Educational Association and the Division for Educational Psychology (FPP) of the German Psychological Association on April 23–25, 1989, at the University of Twente, The Netherlands.     

Can higher education stimulate entrepreneurial intentions among engineering and business students?

This paper approaches the issue of higher entrepreneurship education in motivating young people to start their own business as a viable alternative to the successful integration of university graduates on the labour market. The fundamental question of this research is if, currently, entrepreneurship education influences students’ entrepreneurial intentions and to what extent. The research results, based on the statistical analysis of data collected through a questionnaire distributed to Romanian business and engineering bachelor students in the final year, highlight that business students assessed the effectiveness of higher entrepreneurship education and its positive influence on entrepreneurial intentions to a greater extent than the engineering students. Furthermore, entrepreneurial intentions of engineering students are influenced positively much more by entrepreneurial family background than by entrepreneurship education. The findings provide important highlights for future research, in order to identify the most effective ways of approaching, modernising and expanding entrepreneurship education, aiming to increase entrepreneurial intentions among students, regardless of the graduated field of study.     

心路历程--关于爱情

Dear Friends,I recently learned that February 14th is celebrated inChina as qing ren jie.In America we call this Valentine’sDay and dedicate it to romantic love.Because of this I havebeen asked to devote this month’s column to Love.This is avery complicated subject,and not easy to write about.Thereare no experts.Terms are ambiguous,and there are wide cu-tural differences in our approach to the subject of Love.     

American Students’ Perspectives on Alternative Assessment: do they know it's different?

This study used the 1993 California Learning Assessment System (CLAS) Middle Grades Mathematics Performance Assessment as a platform to examine alternative assessment in actual practice in the United States. Reported here is information gathered using the CLAS regarding student attitudes and approaches toward this new type of assessment. At issue is whether students find alternative assessments to be more motivating and interesting than traditional types of tests, and whether they appreciate the difference between traditional and alternative tasks. Data were collected in 13 schools across the state of California, involving more than 800 students. Instrumentation used in data collection included student surveys as well as in‐depth student retrospective interviews. Findings suggest that students do indeed understand the differences in approaches necessitated by novel, open‐ended versus more familiar multiple‐choice tasks. In addition, student attitudes toward these two types of tasks are discussed in detail.