Can computer applications help improve student performance? For what skills, grade levels, content areas, and type of students are computer applications most effective? Can computer applications improve student attitude toward school and decrease drop-out rates? Discover what the research reveals--in this provocative new book--about these and other crucial questions concerning the impact of computer-based instruction. Assessing the Impact of Computer-Based Instruction provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date summary available on the effects of computer applications on both student achievement and attitudes. Within its pages are also the most extensive bibliography ever prepared on past reviews of research, current reports and articles, and dissertations in the area of computer uses in education. This groundbreaking new book provides educational decisionmakers with the facts they need in order to justify the expense and effort of maintaining and expanding the instructional role of computers in schools. It is also useful as a resource text in the pre-service training of computer educators and for graduate students doing research in instructional computing.

This state-of-the-art resource brings together the most innovative scholars and thinkers in the field of testing to capture the changing conceptual, methodological, and applied landscape of cognitively-grounded educational assessments. Offers a methodologically-rigorous review of cognitive and learning sciences models for testing purposes, as well as the latest statistical and technological know-how for designing, scoring, and interpreting results Written by an international team of contributors at the cutting-edge of cognitive psychology and educational measurement under the editorship of a research director at the Educational Testing Service and an esteemed professor of educational psychology at the University of Alberta as well as supported by an expert advisory board Covers conceptual frameworks, modern methodologies, and applied topics, in a style and at a level of technical detail that will appeal to a wide range of readers from both applied and scientific backgrounds Considers emerging topics in cognitively-grounded assessment, including applications of emerging socio-cognitive models, cognitive models for human and automated scoring, and various innovative virtual performance assessments

In the last decade there have been rapid developments in the field of computer-based learning environments. A whole new generation of computer-based learning environments has appeared, requiring new approaches to design and development. One main feature of current systems is that they distinguish different knowledge bases that are assumed to be necessary to support learning processes. Current computer-based learning environments often require explicit representations of large bodies of knowledge, including knowledge of instruction. This book focuses on instructional models as explicit, potentially implementable representations of knowledge concerning one or more aspects of instruction. The book has three parts, relating to different aspects of the knowledge that should be made explicit in instructional models: knowledge of instructional planning, knowledge of instructional strategies, and knowledge of instructional control. The book is based on a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held at the University of Twente, The Netherlands in July 1991.