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Imagine having a huge exam that is a big portion of your grade. Obviously, you want to do your best on the exam so you don’t ruin your grade; but with such high stakes for one grade. You study extra hard and push yourself so you can score the best grade. As the pressure to get the perfect grade grows, so does your nervousness and wariness for the exam. This scenario is what many students with anxiety face. Anxiety is something all students face throughout their academic careers. While it is hard to avoid anxiety altogether, there are different ways to reduce the level of anxiety students feel. Both of my projects focused on anxiety; however, they took two different paths. For the technical project, my team focused on a more academic setting by creating different graphical timers for online assessments and testing their effect on students’ anxiety levels. Yet, testing anxiety may not be the only type of anxiety students may experience. My STS research focused on how offering mindfulness resources to students can be a more effective way to diminish high anxiety levels in students. Due to the pandemic and quarantine, online exams and assessments have been very popular. One element of online exams that many students dislike is the timer at the top of the screen. The timer at the top of the screen contains three colors that change as time passes. Green means that you are good on time, yellow means that you are about halfway done, and red means you have only a few minutes left on your exam. Red is a very aggressive color and can often raise a student’s anxiety level during an exam. So, my team developed five different graphical timers using Javascript. Then, these timers were used in experiments with three different computer science classes. Students were allowed to choose the different timers and then filled out a small survey to explain how they felt during the exam. The project, however, hasn’t been completed as we are waiting for our final data collection after finals. So, our data analysis will not be conducted until the summer. Students often feel anxiety during their everyday life. Up to 44% of college students have reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, with an even higher number for minority college students. This number has only grown since the pandemic. There is a need for resources that are available for students to use to help diminish their anxiety in academic and non-academic settings. There is the option of cognitive behavioral therapy for students, but there are month-long waitlists before students can even get their first appointment. Once the student can create their first appointment for therapy, it is a huge time commitment. For students time is precious. So if a student doesn’t find therapy to be a great use of time, they will abandon the idea. My analysis of offering mindfulness resources to students suggests that it will be more effective than cognitive behavioral therapy as this allows students to perform mindfulness exercises on their own time and receive the help they need. My STS and technical reports combined illustrate how anxiety is a very complex topic. The reports work together to show that there is a way to offer a solution for two different aspects of anxiety. The research conducted on both topics indicates that there are two different ways to diminish anxiety levels in students, one in an academic setting and the other in a personal setting. While the reports explore two different aspects of anxiety, they both integrate the three aspects of the socio-technical triangle discussed in STS 4500. The socio-technical triangle is crucial as we need to consider all sides of the problem to create a final solution that will benefit all parties involved. Without the three elements of the triangle, the project would leave out some groups, making the project less effective.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an urgent need to move to online teaching and develop innovative teaching techniques to ensure that student learning outcomes (SOs) were fulfilled. This paper tries to answer the important question of whether an established teaching strategy through a multi-course project-based learning (MPL) approach, along with online assessment techniques, helps in the effective achievement of SOs in a senior-level electrical engineering (EE) course. The authors have developed a course project for attaining the objectives of a senior and a capstone course, where students are registered at the same time. In addition, the course conducts assessments online. The paper reports the effect of the two approaches on the attainment of the SOs of the two courses, along with testing the programming and problem-solving abilities of the students. It is known that the MPL approach enhances the critical thinking capacity of students, which is also a major outcome of Sustainable Development Education (ESD). It was ensured that the project that was used to test the fulfillment of a series of SOs were concentrated on soft engineering and project management skills. The difficulty of adopting the MPL method for the senior-level courses is in the scheduling of the course materials to help the student advance to the final project while also aligning the project towards fulfilling the learning outcomes of the individual course. The study also provides the students with feedback on online assessment techniques incorporated within the MPL. Besides this, the effect of the innovative teaching approaches was compared with the same senior course taught using conventional methods in an earlier semester. Based on the feedback from teachers and students from a previously conducted case study, it was concluded that the MPL approach had supported the student learning. The results of the statistical analysis (Chi-square, two-tailed T statistics and hypothesis testing using a z-test) show that an MPL approach and online assessment improved the attainment of the SOs despite the constraints posed by the pandemic. 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Funding: The APC was funded by Section for Statistics and Data Analysis, Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Scopus

Relationships with our students and each other have changed over the past two years with the necessary changes to teaching and learning enforced by the COVID-19 pandemic. A group of academics from business schools in Australia and New Zealand have been reviewing the impact of the changes to teaching and learning implemented over the past two years and consider what has worked, what has not, what changes can be built on and what practices need to be reconsidered. This paper concludes with a set of recommendations on how business academics can reconnect with each other and their students and how business schools can support this reconnection. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The Ministry of National Education, through ICFES, applies evaluations periodically called Saber tests, which aim to contribute to improving the quality of Colombian education. In the fifth grade of the Official Educational Institution Julio Caicedo and Tellez de Cali, low test results are evident in the language and mathematics competences, so a strategy is sought that allows them to be improved and in turn motivate students. This article describes the analysis, design and development of a web tool for the creation and application of assessments by competencies for fifth grade, developed using the Agile Unified Process methodology with some SCRUM instruments. As a result, a functional prototype was presented with a modern software architecture that showed a positive perception by the teachers and students of the institution, who applied the final prototype. El Ministerio de Educación Nacional a través del ICFES, aplica unas evaluaciones periódicamente denominadas pruebas Saber, que tienen como objetivo contribuir al mejoramiento de la calidad de la educación colombiana. En el grado quinto de la Institución Educativa Oficial Julio Caicedo y Téllez de Cali, se evidencian bajos resultados de las pruebas en las competencias de lenguaje y matemáticas, por lo que se busca una estrategia que permita mejorarlas y a su vez motivar a los estudiantes. El presente artículo describe el análisis, diseño y desarrollo de una herramienta web para la creación y aplicación de evaluaciones por competencias para grado quinto, desarrollada mediante la metodología Agile Unified Process con algunos instrumentos de SCRUM. Como resultado, se presentó un prototipo funcional con una arquitectura de software moderna que evidenció una percepción positiva por parte de los docentes y estudiantes de la institución, quienes aplicaron el prototipo final. O Ministério da Educação Nacional, por meio do ICFES, aplica avaliações periodicamente chamadas de testes Sabre, que visam contribuir para melhorar a qualidade da educação colombiana. Na quinta série da Instituição Oficial de Ensino Julio Caicedo e Tellez de Cali, os baixos resultados dos testes são evidentes nas competências de linguagem e matemática, portanto, é buscada uma estratégia que permita melhorar e motivar os alunos. Este artigo descreve a análise, o design e o desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta da Web para a criação e aplicação de avaliações por competências da quinta série, desenvolvida usando a metodologia Agile Unified Process com alguns instrumentos SCRUM. Como resultado, um protótipo funcional foi apresentado com uma arquitetura de software moderna que mostrou uma percepção positiva pelos professores e alunos da instituição, que aplicaram o protótipo final.

The Ministry of National Education, through ICFES, applies evaluations periodically called Saber tests, which aim to contribute to improving the quality of Colombian education. In the fifth grade of the Official Educational Institution Julio Caicedo and Tellez de Cali, low test results are evident in the language and mathematics competences, so a strategy is sought that allows them to be improved and in turn motivate students. This article describes the analysis, design and development of a web tool for the creation and application of assessments by competencies for fifth grade, developed using the Agile Unified Process methodology with some SCRUM instruments. As a result, a functional prototype was presented with a modern software architecture that showed a positive perception by the teachers and students of the institution, who applied the final prototype. El Ministerio de Educación Nacional a través del ICFES, aplica unas evaluaciones periódicamente denominadas pruebas Saber, que tienen como objetivo contribuir al mejoramiento de la calidad de la educación colombiana. En el grado quinto de la Institución Educativa Oficial Julio Caicedo y Téllez de Cali, se evidencian bajos resultados de las pruebas en las competencias de lenguaje y matemáticas, por lo que se busca una estrategia que permita mejorarlas y a su vez motivar a los estudiantes. El presente artículo describe el análisis, diseño y desarrollo de una herramienta web para la creación y aplicación de evaluaciones por competencias para grado quinto, desarrollada mediante la metodología Agile Unified Process con algunos instrumentos de SCRUM. Como resultado, se presentó un prototipo funcional con una arquitectura de software moderna que evidenció una percepción positiva por parte de los docentes y estudiantes de la institución, quienes aplicaron el prototipo final. O Ministério da Educação Nacional, por meio do ICFES, aplica avaliações periodicamente chamadas de testes Sabre, que visam contribuir para melhorar a qualidade da educação colombiana. Na quinta série da Instituição Oficial de Ensino Julio Caicedo e Tellez de Cali, os baixos resultados dos testes são evidentes nas competências de linguagem e matemática, portanto, é buscada uma estratégia que permita melhorar e motivar os alunos. Este artigo descreve a análise, o design e o desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta da Web para a criação e aplicação de avaliações por competências da quinta série, desenvolvida usando a metodologia Agile Unified Process com alguns instrumentos SCRUM. Como resultado, um protótipo funcional foi apresentado com uma arquitetura de software moderna que mostrou uma percepção positiva pelos professores e alunos da instituição, que aplicaram o protótipo final.

Background: Computer-aided learning management systems (LMSs) are widely used in higher education and are viewed as beneficial when transitioning from conventional face-to-face teaching to fully online courses. While LMSs have unique tools for transferring and assessing knowledge, their ability to engage and assess learners needs further investigation. This paper focuses on a study examining the LMS “Moodle” to ascertain the effectiveness of “Moodle quizzes” to improve, assess and distinguish knowledge in a civil engineering course at an Australian university. The course has a database comprising 62 formative and 61 summative quiz questions with embedded text, images, audio and video. This study investigates the use of these quiz questions with four course cohorts and 169 students. The quizzes assessed competencies of students during various stages of a study period through automated marking. The suitability of questions to assess and distinguish student knowledge levels was determined using a psychometric analysis based on facility index (FI) and the discrimination index (DI) statistics embedded within the Moodle quizzes. Results: This study highlights strategies used to set and review quiz questions for formative and summative assessments. Results indicated that students were engaged and satisfied in the formative assessment because they viewed the interactive videos between 2 and 6 times and 65% of students attempted all the formative questions. The FI indicated student pass rate for the summative questions and DI indicated the difficulty of these questions, while the combination of FI and DI results separated students with different knowledge levels. Using these Moodle statistics provided information to make effective decisions on how to improve the summative quizzes. Conclusion: The multimodal quizzes were effective in teaching and assessing a theoretical engineering course and provided efficient methods to replace conventional assessments. The FI and DI indexes are useful statistical tools in redesigning appropriate sets of questions. Time-poor academics will benefit from using these easily attainable Moodle statistics to inform decisions while revising the quizzes and making assessments more autonomous. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Universities and educational institutions worldwide had to abruptly suspend their in-person classes and offer the rest of the term in an online for-mat. This adjustment meant that instructors had to switch their instruction format and redesign their assessment strategies to ensure good quality edu-cation. In this work, we present the methods used in two courses for this transition and the impact on student learning. Specifically, we present data from two courses: second-year engineering mathematics and first-year object-oriented programming. The online instruction was delivered covering all the objectives, and the online assessment environment was designed with all possible safeguards to maintain integrity. Our data from these assessments show that the measures were successful. Further, the data indicate that while the pandemic severely impacted the first-year students, the second-year students did not experience any learning issues in the transition. We also present the lessons learned for future improvement.

Modern classrooms see many innovative practices in facilitation. Most facilitators prefer using presentations animated videos and multimedia to better explain their content. Campuses are Wi-Fi enabled and students use tablets, laptops and smartphones to capture the essence of a lecture. However the one area where technological innovation is still lagging behind, in an academic setup, is in assessment. This paper looks at the perception of students to the use of clicker technology as a form of paperless assessment. Clicker technology was introduced as a tool for conducting formative and summative assessments to a first year electrical engineering subject, Digital Systems 1. The paper first elaborates on the significance, types and the methods of academic assessments. It then discusses the pros and cons of assessments using clicker technology. Thirdly it sheds light on the research methodology used in acquiring data for this research. Finally the results are analyzed which among others show that that 71% students enjoyed using clickers in class for formative assessments while only 52% appreciated its use in summative assessments. One of the reasons touted for this decrease is student anxiety. The key recommendation from this research is to increase the use of these assessment techniques within a formative assessment environment so as to familiarize students to eventually use it with confidence in summative assessments.

The online travel communities and tourism agencies have favored the emergence of global assessment alternatives of accommodation units included in the visitors’ travel options. This article analyzes the online assessment of the accommodation units from Braşov county and which are the differences between the comfort category of accommodation units according to the national classification system of the accommodation units and the online assessments found on two of the most well known online communities in the field, namely TripAdvisor and Booking.com.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. COVID-19 has necessitated a rapid shift to teaching in virtual environments across the educational spectrum. In this respect, instructors previously unfamiliar, or under-familiar, with virtual teaching environments need to learn quickly and effectively how these environments work and how they can be used to successfully deliver courses, especially within health professions education contexts. These twelve tips provide insight on the practice of teaching in virtual environments, from course design, to student engagement, to assessment practices, to maximising the potential that technology can provide for both the instructor and the students. Moreover, these tips inform virtual pedagogical practices in the health professions for all levels of experience.

Bibliografía: p. 5-6. Review: "Megastudy” is the term coined to refer to large-scale experiments completed by thousands (or even hundred-thousands) of participants (Chetail et al., 2015; Gimenes et al., 2016). These types of studies have exponentially increased in the last decade, from around 130 publications referencing the term in 2007 to more than 300 in 2017 (Kuperman, 2015). Their uses span different fields, such as cognitive science, medicine, education, and psychology research. Particularly for the field of psycholinguistics, the increasing demand for massive and diverse databases upon which non-trivial hypotheses and models can be tested, has led to a dramatic increase in large-scale lexical megastudies (Keuleers and Balota, 2015). Lexical decision megastudies have been carried out in multiple languages, including American and British English ((Balota et al., 2007; Keuleers et al., 2012); respectively), French (Ferrand et al., 2010), and Dutch (Keuleers et al., 2010; Brysbaert et al., 2016). In Spanish, previous laboratory studies have explored the effects of psycholinguistic variables on a large amount of words, but with a relatively small number of participants (Davies et al., 2013; González-Nosti et al., 2014). Although these are laboratory studies that involve a large number of participants, or a large number of words, other approaches, such as crowdsourced megastudies, distributed through online platforms, allow the collection of information with large numbers of participants and words at a reduced cost (Keuleers et al., 2015). The shift in view from the laboratory to this type of crowdsourced research makes novel technologies like smartphones or tablets powerful research tools that allow for large-scale studies (Dufau et al., 2011). Likewise, large-scale studies have the benefit of studying and quantifying phenomena of interest across a varied and a vast number of participants. Another essential advantage of megastudies is the ability to conduct virtual experiments with randomly selected samples within the same database to test multiple hypotheses of different nature (Kuperman, 2015). They are becoming essential for psycholinguistic studies, as the study of language has been traditionally focalized in small and homogeneous groups of participants, not allowing the evaluation of important factors, such as previous linguistic experience, degree of second-language proficiency, or age, to cite a few (Keuleers et al., 2015). In all, megastudies provide a robust framework to test theories and provide important information that can be used for further experimentation. So far, no previous attempt has been made to produce a crowdsourced lexical decision megastudy in Spanish, which with about 400 million speakers across the world (Ethnologue, 2016), is the second most used native language after Chinese. A well-designed study would also allow highlighting differences in how Spanish is used in the more than 20 Spanish-speaking countries across the globe. Moreover, the database presented here, henceforth called SPALEX, adds to the increasing literature on lexical decision megastudies by focusing on native Spanish speakers at a global scale and with a vast amount of words, to provide a useful tool for researchers exploring the acquisition and processing of this language in native and foreign contexts. Sitio web de la revista (Consulta: 20-02-2019)

This study explores student attitudes to the use of substantive on-line assessments that require mathematical answers. Since there is limited guidance available for their use in a university setting, our goal is to learn what are the important aspects in student acceptance of e-assessments that support learning of mathematical subjects in higher education. To that end we analyse the effects of a variety of attitudinal factors towards such assessments amongst a cross-section of first year students in an English University, using a detailed questionnaire. These students were all previously exposed to on-line assessments containing substantial mathematical work, including testing of and feedback on the algebraic structure of their answers, based on identifiable misconceptions underlying these answers. Since students received highly tailored feedback, the expectation was that the usefulness of this feedback would be the key driver in their usage of educational technology. The results indeed suggest that students find on-line feedback more enjoyable and useful than traditional feedback, but enjoyment and attitude are the two most important factors.

The increased availability and use of online devices has the Marine Corps College of Distance Education and Training (CDET) looking at Experience API (xAPI) for ways to improve the accessibility, effectiveness, and efficiency of the educational instruction they provide. This thesis recommends a way for CDET to incorporate xAPI into the courseware currently delivered by their learning management system (LMS), MarineNet. Research was conducted into how learning objectives, online assessments, and xAPI can create a learning objective performance value (a measurement of a student's proficiency in a specific learning objective). A prototype system consisting of a LMS, Learning Record Store (LRS), and xAPI courseware was developed, and learning experiences linking course assessment questions to learning objectives were extracted to the LRS. The learning experiences were then analyzed to calculate learning objective performance values, which provide the ability to determine students' strengths and weaknesses in specific subject areas. This enables tailored curriculums that allow time and resources to be spent in subject areas that most benefit the student and the Marine Corps, while maximizing the effectiveness and efficiency of their e-learning courseware. http://archive.org/details/integrationofexp1094549336 Major, United States Marine Corps Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

This article provides a brief background on the evolution of the two testing consortia and the perspective of one principal with the transition to online testing in an elementary school.