We develop a protocol for “distributed proctoring” which allows a network of graders to grade individual problems solved by a network of test takers. The mutual anonymity of the test takers and graders is ensured using anonymous MIXs, but an audit trail is provided in the event of a grading dispute. We discuss other applications for this protocol, more generally defined as “digital piecework.”

recent versions of international high-stakes tests like toefl and ielts have made use of integrated tasks in addition to the traditional independent tasks in a claim to provide a more realistic estimation of the test takers’ language abilities. the present study aimed to investigate how test takers’ performance may differ on such tasks. as such, the test takers’ performance was compared on ielt...

Dynamic assessment (DA) which is rooted in Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory involves the integration of instruction and assessment in a dialectical way to achieve two main purposes: enhancing learners' development and understanding about their learning potential. However, the feasibility and appropriateness of mediation are two main concerns of DA. The former is concerned with the applica...

When taking multiple-choice tests of reading comprehension such as the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), test takers use a range of strategies that vary in the extent to which they emphasize reading the questions versus reading the passages. Researchers have challenged the construct validity of these tests because test takers can achieve better-than-chance performance even if they do not read t...

Recent versions of international high-stakes tests like TOEFL and IELTS have made use of integrated tasks in addition to the traditional independent tasks in a claim to provide a more realistic estimation of the test takers’ language abilities. The present study aimed to investigate how test takers’ performance may differ on such tasks. As such, the test takers’ performance was compared on IELT...

Cheating is a common phenomenon in high stakes admission, licensing and university exams and threatens their validity. To detect if some exam questions had been affected by cheating, we simulated how data would look like if some test takers possessed item preknowledge: Responses to a small number of items were set to correct for 1-10% of test takers. Item difficulty, item discrimination, item f...

Standards-referenced educational reform has increased the prevalence of standardized testing; however, whether these tests accurately measure students' competencies has been questioned. This may be due to domain-specific assessments placing a differing domain-general cognitive load on test-takers. To investigate this possibility, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to identify...