Group items tagged

"The project studies the diagnosis of reading and writing abilities in a second or foreign language. It seeks to identify the cognitive features which predict a learner's strengths and weaknesses in those areas. The project brings together scholars from applied linguistics, psychology and assessment to engage in multidisciplinary work and to develop innovative ways of diagnosing the development of second and foreign language abilities. The main contribution of the project will be to offer novel, well-grounded theoretical insights and to develop a range of methodologies to study second and foreign language development and its diagnosis. We are exploring the causes underlying strengths and weaknesses in language development, and the relationship between literacy skills in one's first language and the development of second language abilities. The results of the project will also have practical implications by providing a sounder theoretical basis for the development of curricula, pedagogic materials and diagnostic tests."

"Margaret Malone, Senior Testing Associate at CAL, discusses four key concepts of assessment, describes free online resources that promote assessment literacy among language educators, and explores how these tools can be useful for all stakeholders"

The Standards-based Measurement of Proficiency (STAMP), a criterion-referenced, Web-based assessment tool, measures students' language proficiency at levels ranging from Novice-low to Intermediate-mid. STAMP currently measures reading, writing, and speaking proficiencies in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. CASLS strives to continually improve STAMP's test design while adding new languages and new levels. STAMP is available through CASLS' partner company, Avant Assessment.

Opportunity for language instructors to participate in piloting new proficiency tests.

In 2010 and 2012, we tested and evaluated four major LMS for accessibility/usability: Blackboard, Desired2Learn, Moodel, and SAKAI. The results have been publicized in CSUN (2010) and Midwest Educause (2012) conferences. Since then, we have observed that LMS vendors have continued to strengthen the accessibility and usability of their systems, while also working to incorporate some of the features suggested in our evaluations. In light of this ongoing interest and activity, we have revised and enhanced our evaluation criteria based on common features, streamlined our evaluation process, and rescored our LMS systems. At CSUN 2013, we presented a high-level overview of the results of our new evaluation, along with side-by-side comparisons that support our recommendations for improving learning management systems for users with disabilities.

"Welcome to the ItalNet publication of the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano (OVI) textual database. The production database contains 1849 vernacular texts (21.2 million words, 479,000 unique forms) the majority of which are dated prior to 1375, the year of Boccaccio's death. The beta-test installation of the database under PhiloLogic3 contains 1960 documents (see below). The verse and prose works include early masters of Italian literature like Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, as well as lesser-known and obscure texts by poets, merchants, and medieval chroniclers. The OVI database was created to aid in the compilation of an historical dictionary of the Italian language, the Tesoro della lingua italiana delle origini, (portions of which are now available online). The fully-searchable ItalNet implementation of the OVI database presented here has been produced in order to enable scholars around the world to benefit from this rich textual resource. "

White paper from OWL Testing Software

On Tuesday, after a year of public testing, the Skype team (now owned by eBay) released Skype 4.0 for Windows, which the company calls "the biggest new release in Skype's history." (Gives summary of features in Skype, what's new and some evaluation.)

Create your own learning and testing materials (CD-ROM and Web) with our authoring software 'Telos Language Partner' and make your eLearning content meet your learners' needs. Free non-commercial license. Windows only.

Web CT based exam, administered in Language Lab to Johns Hopkins.

Links to four basic placement exams written by the Italian department at Wellesley. Low-tech: just an HTML form which is submitted.

Website that gives several methods of testing what verison of Java you have. Useful for making sure you have the right plug-ins to run various websites.

"This customizable easy to use toolbar (See the toolbar in action in its video tour) seamlessly integrates with familiar applications including Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, and Adobe Reader, allowing students to access the support tools they need from within mainstream software programs. It highlights and reads text aloud using natural sounding voices and also includes a comprehensive set of support tools for reading, writing, studying, research, and test taking. Read&Write GOLD allows teachers to provide the differentiated instruction that is necessary to meet the needs of diverse student populations and ensure that all students reach their potential and achieve success. "

""Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility" is a multi-page resource suite that outlines different approaches for evaluating Web sites for accessibility. While it does not provide checkpoint-by-checkpoint testing techniques, it does provide general procedures and tips for evaluation in different situations, from evaluation during Web site development to ongoing monitoring of existing sites. The approaches in these pages are intended to supplement other content management and quality assurance procedures."

"This article is designed to help users who are new to NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) learn the basic controls for testing web content, and to serve as a reference for the occasional NVDA user. NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It supports over 20 languages and can run on any computer entirely from a USB drive with no installation."

"Have you used all of the features of the nciku Japanese dictionary? Apart from looking up English or Japanese words to see their translation, kana pronunciation and romaji, you can also draw kanji characters with your mouse to look up words you don't know how to type, take memorization tests and view flashcards based on prebuilt word lists or your own custom vocabulary lists, and highlight words in dictionary definitions to see a quick translation. "

NetSupport School is a class leading training software solution, providing Teachers with the ability to instruct, monitor and interact with their Students either individually, as a pre-defined group or to the overall class. Combining advanced classroom PC monitoring, real-time Presentation and Annotation tools, with an innovative customised Testing suite, Internet and Application control, automated Lesson Plans, Printer Management, Instant Messenger control, Content Monitoring and Desktop Security, this latest version of NetSupport School rises to the challenge and requirements of today's modern classroom.

This site provides access to a corpus of over 900 text samples gathered from test subjects at Loyola College, Baltimore, Maryland, in 2006 and 2007. Twenty-one subjects provide a completely correlated corpus in which each subject provided their opinion in each of six predetermined topics in each of six genres: blog, chat, discussion, email, essay, and interview. We hope this corpus will be useful to researchers in the fields of natural language processing and computational linguistics.

"Lingt Classroom helps teachers enable their students to speak. Create online assignments that make engaging and assessing spoken performance as natural as giving out a worksheet. Make oral exams that take a fraction of the time to administer and assess. Offer targeted feedback to individual responses to maximize student improvement. Incorporate video and images to create media and culture-rich exercises. Archive all your assignments and students' responses to reuse next time and track individual improvement."

"PeerWise is an online repository of multiple-choice questions that are created, answered, rated and discussed by students. Typically, at the beginning of a term, a course using PeerWise begins with an empty repository. This grows gradually as the course progresses and students author and contribute relevant questions. All activity remains anonymous to students, however instructors are able to view the identity of question and comment authors and have the ability to delete inappropriate questions."