Problems in the context evaluation of individualized courses

From 1970 to 1974 an Individualized Study System (ISS) for mathematics courses for first year engineering students was developed. Because of changes in the curriculum, new courses had to be developed from August 1974. The context evaluation of these new courses (ISS-calculus) consisted mainly of the evaluation of the mathematics courses developed during the preceding years. After a year the Department decided to suspend ISS as a teaching system for calculus partly because of dissatisfaction of the teachers with ISS-calculus.This paper consists of two parts. Part one (sections 1,2) is a case study and summarizes the development of the system from 1970 to 1975. It examines in detail the problems encountered in this development with special attention to the role of the executive teacher. The organization of an ISS-course and the planning decisions to be taken become more complex according to the number of executive teachers. In part two (sections 3,4) we provide a classification of ISS courses to illustrate the complexity of the system and we offer some general advice on the management of individualized study systems.     

A Distribution-Free Approach for Comparing Growth of Knowledge

The longitudinal testing of student achievement requires the solution of several new problem areas. In this article, several small groups of medical students at the University of Limburg Medical School in Maastricht, The Netherlands, are compared with respect to their performances. The results indicate, that, despite the possession of more knowledge at entrance, students with a low rate of growth of knowledge in the first year demonstrate a lower level of knowledge after the second academic year and continue to do so throughout the academic program when compared to students who show a higher rate of growth of knowledge in the first year. The analysis has been carried out using a distribution-free version of a longitudinal IRT-model suggested by Albers, Does, Imbos, and Janssen (1989). Furthermore, growth of knowledge has been described by means of a general regression model. Statistical inferences are possible using a randomization design extended to the situation where the observations are time-dependent proportions of correct answers.     

Pedagogical practices and ICT use around the world: Findings from the IEA international comparative study SITES2006

This special issue presents a number of secondary analyses of data collected in 2006 in the Second Information Technology in Education Study (SITES 2006). This study is the last of a number of international comparative surveys on information and communication technology (ICT) in education conducted under auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). After summarizing the aims and scope of previous studies, the aims of SITES 2006 as well as key aspects of the research design are summarized. This is followed by a brief abstract of each of the articles included in this special issue. Three articles discuss international findings of the study and also findings from three participating education systems (South Africa, Denmark, Hong Kong SAR) are presented.