A Simple Model to Determine the Efficient Duration of Exams     

Jules L. Ellis 《Educational and psychological measurement》2021,81(3):549

This study develops a theoretical model for the costs of an exam as a function of its duration. Two kind of costs are distinguished: (1) the costs of measurement errors and (2) the costs of the measurement. Both costs are expressed in time of the student. Based on a classical test theory model, enriched with assumptions on the context, the costs of the exam can be expressed as a function of various parameters, including the duration of the exam. It is shown that these costs can be minimized in time. Applied in a real example with reliability .80, the outcome is that the optimal exam time would be much shorter and would have reliability .675. The consequences of the model are investigated and discussed. One of the consequences is that optimal exam duration depends on the study load of the course, all other things being equal. It is argued that it is worthwhile to investigate empirically how much time students spend on preparing for resits. Six variants of the model are distinguished, which differ in their weights of the errors and in the way grades affect how much time students study for the resit.  相似文献   

Learning science through writing: associations with prior conceptions of writing and perceptions of a writing program   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Robert A. Ellis  Charlotte E. Taylor  Helen Drury 《高等教育研究与发展》2007,26(3):297-311

Students in a large undergraduate biology course were expected to write a scientific report as a key part of their course design. This study investigates the quality of learning arising from the writing experience and how it relates to the quality of students’ preconceptions of learning through writing and their perceptions of their writing program that led to their report. Closed‐ended questionnaires investigating student conceptions and perceptions of writing, and approaches to writing, were completed by 121 students. Significant associations were found amongst qualitatively different prior and post conceptions of writing, approaches to writing and achievement. The results of the analyses suggest that the effective support of student experiences of writing reports requires teachers to be aware of the type of conceptions that students bring to their course and the perceptions they hold about the purpose of the writing program in which they are engaged.  相似文献   

The effect of sequence of instruction on students' cognitive preferences and recall in the context of a problem-oriented method of teaching     

N. C. Boreham  Margaret Redford Ellis  C. H. Morgan 《Instructional Science》1984,13(4):329-345

This experiment investigated two possible sequences in which biochemical theory and the clinical applications of such theory can be presented to pre-clinical medical students. The dependent variables were the students' cognitive preferences and their ability to recall the contents of the instruction. Seventy-two students were randomly allocated to either a Theory-to-application or an Application-to-theory condition. The results indicated that the Application-to-theory sequence of instruction produced a significantly greater preference for being taught the specific facts of pre-clinical medical science, as opposed to being taught about the clinical applications. However, this was achieved at the expense of a significantly reduced ability to actually recall the theory which was taught.  相似文献   

Repurposing children’s television for the classroom: teachers’ use of “square one tv” videocassettes     

Milton Chen  Jan Ellis  Karen Hoelscher 《Educational technology research and development : ETR & D》1988,36(3):161-178

This study investigated whether a major new children’s television series on mathematics, produced primarily for an at-home audience, could be “repurposed” for classroom use. Segments were selected from the PBS children’s series, “Square One TV,” and edited into 30 videocassettes organized by curriculum topics. Teachers in two public elementary schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts, used the cassettes over a 10-week period. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected, including teacher interviews, teacher journals of classroom use, researcher observations, a survey of student attitudes toward mathematics, and student interviews. Teachers found the reformatted cassettes to be useful motivational and instructional resources, especially in demonstrating connections between mathematical ideas and real-world situations. A videotape of teacher and student responses is available from the authors. This paper written while Dr. Chen was an assistant professor at the same school, won the Instructional Video Paper Competition marking the 25th anniversary of the Agency for Instructional Technology, Bloomington, Indiana.  相似文献   

DEWEY'S CONCEPTION OF EDUCATION FOR GROWTH     

Frederick E. Ellis 《Educational theory》1955,5(1):12-15

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Students’ approaches to groupwork in a blended course,associations with perceptions of the online environment and academic achievement – when is learning engaged?     

Robert A. Ellis 《Education and Information Technologies》2016,21(5):1095-1112

University teachers provided first year Arts students with hundreds of cinematic images online to analyse as a key part of their predominantly face-to-face undergraduate course. This qualitative study investigates the extent to which the groups engaged in learning involving their analysis of the images and how this was related to their perception of the ICT-mediated environment. Interviews and questionnaires completed by students revealed that the extent of engaged learning was related to the quality of the approach to groupwork reported by the students, the quality of their approach to the analysis of the images and their perceptions of key aspects of the online environment which provided the images. The findings have implications for the design and approach to teaching best suited for students involved in groupwork and the use of ICT resources provided to promote engaged experiences of learning.  相似文献   

Competency, capability, complexity and computers: exploring a new model for conceptualising end-user computer education     

Renata Phelps  Stewart Hase  Allan Ellis 《British journal of educational technology : journal of the Council for Educational Technology》2005,36(1):67-84

Notions of competency have dominated the computer education literature, and have underpinned Competency‐Based Training (CBT) in information technology at all levels of education and training. The emergence of counter‐narratives underpinned by the capability movement, have as yet had minimal impact on practice in computer education. New discourses in educational theory and practice which are founded on non‐linear approaches to learning and teaching provide added impetus to engage in the competency/capability debate, and re‐examine our approaches to computer education. This paper explores complexity theories and demonstrates how complexity's pedagogical implications can lead to new models for understanding computer learning and teaching. A new model for conceptualising end‐user computer education is presented that was derived from a three‐year action research initiative with pre‐service teachers.  相似文献   

Learning through discussions   总被引：1，自引：1，他引：1  

Robert A. Ellis  David Levy  Kelvin Tan 《高等教育研究与发展》2004,23(1):73-93

Students studying a third‐year e‐commerce subject experienced face‐to‐face and online discussions as an important part of their learning experience. The quality of the students' experiences of learning through those discussions is investigated in this study. This study uses qualitative approaches to investigate the variation in the students' understanding of what they were learning through discussions, and how they went about engaging in them. Quantitative analyses are used to investigate how the students' experience related to their performance. Key outcomes of the study include that the quality of the students' experience of learning through discussions is positively related to their performance and that face‐to‐face and online discussions have qualitatively different benefits for learning.  相似文献   

Teaching adolescents with learning disabilities to generate and use task-specific strategies     

E S Ellis  D D Deshler  J B Schumaker 《Journal of learning disabilities》1989,22(2):108-119

The effects of an intervention designed to enhance students' roles as control agents for strategic functioning were investigated. The goal was to increase the ability of students labeled learning disabled to generate new strategies or adapt existing task-specific strategies for meeting varying demands of the regular classroom. Measures were taken in three areas: (a) metacognitive knowledge related to generating or adapting strategies, (b) ability to generate problem-solving strategies for novel problems, and (c) the effects of the intervention on students' regular classroom grades and teachers' perceptions of the students' self-reliance and work quality. A multiple baseline across subjects design was used. The intervention resulted in dramatic increases in the subjects' verbal expression of metacognitive knowledge and ability to generate task-specific strategies. Students' regular class grades increased; for those students who did not spontaneously generalize use of the strategy to problems encountered in these classes, providing instruction to target specific classes resulted in improved grades. Teacher perceptions of students' self-reliance and work quality did not change, probably because baseline measures were already high in both areas. Implications for instruction and future research are discussed.  相似文献   

Innovation in teacher education: towards a critical re-examination     

Viv Ellis  Mariana Souto-Manning  Keith Turvey 《师资教育杂志》2019,45(1):2-14

ABSTRACT

In the course of introducing a themed issue of the journal on “Innovation in Teacher Education’, we lay out an argument for re-examining the meaning of innovation in the field, shifting it away from the dominance of the economistic and technological. Acknowledging its status as a ‘buzzword’, we distinguish between purposes for innovation and, in particular, between changes driven by arguments for social mobility and those driven by social justice and equity. Two imperatives for innovation underpinned by arguments for social justice and equity are identified: the concept of a ‘teacher education debt’, built on Ladson-Billings’ more general notion of ‘education debt’; and the humanization of learning, teaching and becoming a teacher as person-centred, relational practices. The final section of the article introduces each of the six papers in the context of the discussion in previous sections about these imperatives for change.  相似文献