Instructional Tools in Educational Measurement and Statistics (ITEMS) for School Personnel: Evaluation of Two Web-Based Training Modules

• Activity Number: 337
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 8, 2006 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Rebecca Zwick*+ and Jeffrey C. Sklar and Graham Wakefield
• Companies: University of California, Santa Barbara and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and University of California, Santa Barbara
• Keywords: standardized testing ; statistics education ; psychometrics

Abstract

In the current No Child Left Behind era, K--12 teachers and principals are expected to have a sophisticated understanding of standardized test results, use them to improve instruction, and communicate them to others. The goal of this project, funded by the National Science Foundation, is to develop and evaluate three web-based instructional modules in educational measurement and statistics to help school personnel acquire the "assessment literacy" required for these roles. The first module, "What's the Score?," was administered to 113 educators who also completed an assessment literacy quiz. Viewing the module had a small, but statistically significant, positive effect on quiz scores. In 2006, we will collect data on the effectiveness of our second module, which explains the impact of measurement and sampling error on test results.