Virtual Reality for Aggression Assessment: The Development and Preliminary Results of Two Virtual Reality Tasks to Assess Reactive and Proactive Aggression in Males

Validly measuring aggression is challenging because self-reports are plagued with biased answer tendencies and behavioral measures with ethical concerns and low ecological validity. The current study, therefore, introduces a novel virtual reality (VR) aggression assessment tool, differentially assessing reactive and proactive aggression. Two VR tasks were developed, one in an alley environment (N = 24, all male, Mage = 23.88, 83.3% students) and an improved second one in a bar (N = 50, all male, Mage = 22.54, 90% students). In this bar VR task, participants were randomly assigned to either the reactive condition where they were triggered by a cheating and insulting dart-player or to the proactive condition where they could earn extra money by aggressing. Participants’ level of self-reported aggression and psychopathy was assessed, after which they engaged in either the reactive or proactive VR task. Changes in affect and blood pressure were also measured. Aggression in the reactive VR task was evidenced to mostly display convergent validity because it positively correlated with self-reported aggression and total and fearless dominance factor scores of psychopathy, and there was a trend relationship with increased systolic blood pressure. The validity of the proactive aggression variant of our VR bar paradigm received less support, and needs more refinement. It can be concluded that VR is a potentially promising tool to experimentally induce and assess (reactive) aggression, which has the potential to provide aggression researchers and clinicians with a realistic and modifiable aggression assessment environment.

The Use of the Kahoot! Learning Platform as a Type of Formative Assessment in the Context of Pre-University Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic Period

The present study aims to display how using a personal assessment environment based on the interactive Kahoot! platform actively supports the teaching–learning process. The goal is to improve the instructive–educational process by applying a learning platform based on play and digital technology that favors a qualitative educational endeavor. The use of the Kahoot! platform as form of assessment had a significant and direct positive effect on the educational process during the COVID-19 pandemic.

System-Based Ontology for Assessing Learner's Programming Practical Works Activities (S_Onto_ALPPWA)

This article introduces a new learner's self-assessment environment as CEHL that allows comparison of learners' programs with those elaborated by the teacher. The subjacent idea is to indirectly compare programs through their graphical representations described by ontologies. So, CEHL developed so-called S_Onto_ALPPWA which allows comparing learners' productions with those elaborated by the teacher. The tool allows essentially (1) generating two ontologies from the learner's program and the teacher's one, (2) applies some matching algorithms for measuring degrees of similarity and dissimilarity between learner's program and teacher's one, and (3) assessing the learners by giving them a list of semantic and syntactic errors detected in their programs. The present work is an extension of the authors' previous work, which did not take into account semantics errors. In the present work, they have managed to detect syntactic and semantic errors by using ontologies. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the system, two prospective experiments were conducted. The obtained results were very encouraging.

Undergraduate Students’ Perception on Assessment Experience in a Malaysian Medical School: Comparison among Gender, Ethnicity and Phase of Study

INTRODUCTION: It is a well-known fact that assessment influences learning and study behaviour. Assessment affects what and how students learn, either positive or negative learning behaviour. This study was aimed to determine students’ perceived assessment experience and the comparison among different gender, ethnicity, and phase of the study. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study. Assessment Experience Questionnaire (AEQ) version 3.3 was distributed to 324 undergraduate medical students of Universiti Putra Malaysia. The AEQ score among different gender, ethnicity, and phase of the study was compared using independent t-test and one-way ANOVA. RESULTS: Female students were found to develop a surface approach to learning, learn new things from the assessment, and be satisfied more with the teaching compared to males. Chinese students tended to put higher effort into learning compared to Malay. Clinical students valued more the feedback received and had clearer goals and expectations for their work than preclinical students. However, preclinical students tended to put a higher quantity of effort, learn wider coverage of syllabus and develop a surface approach of learning than clinical students. The respondents commented that feedback is lacking and suggested having more feedback sessions with their teachers after assessment. CONCLUSION: There were different assessment experiences and learning found among different gender, race, and phase of the study. These may affect their academic performance and are probably due to the curriculum setting. Understanding student assessment experience and its impact helps the faculty to improve the assessment structure for a conducive assessment environment and meaningful learning experience for the students.

Online Education During a Pandemic – Adaptation and Impact on Student Learning

Universities and educational institutions worldwide had to abruptly suspend their in-person classes and offer the rest of the term in an online for-mat. This adjustment meant that instructors had to switch their instruction format and redesign their assessment strategies to ensure good quality edu-cation. In this work, we present the methods used in two courses for this transition and the impact on student learning. Specifically, we present data from two courses: second-year engineering mathematics and first-year object-oriented programming. The online instruction was delivered covering all the objectives, and the online assessment environment was designed with all possible safeguards to maintain integrity. Our data from these assessments show that the measures were successful. Further, the data indicate that while the pandemic severely impacted the first-year students, the second-year students did not experience any learning issues in the transition. We also present the lessons learned for future improvement.

Indoor Quality-of-position Visual Assessment Using Crowdsourced Fingerprint Maps

Internet-based Indoor Navigation (IIN) architectures organize signals collected by crowdsourcers in Fingerprint Maps (FMs) to improve localization given that satellite-based technologies do not operate accurately in indoor spaces where people spend 80%–90% of their time. In this article, we study the Quality-of-Position (QoP) assessment problem, which aims to assess in an offline manner the localization accuracy that can be obtained by a user that aims to localize using a FM. Particularly, our proposed ACCES framework uses a generic interpolation method using Gaussian Processes (GP), upon which a navigability score at any location is derived using the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB). We derive adaptations of ACCES for both Magnetic and Wi-Fi data and implement a complete visual assessment environment, which has been incorporated in the Anyplace open-source IIN. Our experimental evaluation of ACCES in Anyplace suggests the high qualitative and quantitative benefits of our propositions.

English language assessment: unfolding school students’ and parents’ views

The current study analyzes Chilean students’ and parents’ perceptions of English language assessment. 352 Chilean 10 th graders were surveyed using the Perceptions of the Assessment Tasks Inventory, the Perceived Classroom Assessment Environment Scale, and the Test Anxiety Scale in order to measure their perceptions of English language assessment. A semi-structured interview was also conducted to capture the perceptions of 74 parents about English and the way their children are assessed in the English subject. The quantitative data was analyzed using the Pearson Correlation Coefficient to measure how strong the relationship of the scores was in the three scales, and qualitative data was categorized using content and frequency analysis. The findings suggest that the subscales of the three surveys hold statistically significant relationships and students feel that a Learning-oriented assessment environment benefits them more than a Performance-oriented one. The former is a kind of environment that favors students’ learning and mastery of subject materials, whereas the latter is a type of environment that aligns with classroom assessment practices that emphasize the importance of grades over learning. The qualitative results also suggest that parents have a positive perception of the English language and believe it is useful for their children’s life even though they themselves might find it difficult to learn the language.

Test and Item Response Theories and School Environment as Assessment Practice Factors among Science and Mathematics Teachers in Secondary Schools in Eastern Uganda

This study sought to establish the effect of knowledge of the Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT) and school assessment environment on assessment practice among teachers of science and mathematics subjects in Eastern Uganda Secondary Schools. The study assessed the levels of knowledge and application of CTT and IRT in assessment, examined the suitability of school environment for assessment and established the influence of school environment and knowledge of CTT and IRT on teachers’ engagement in assessment. A census of 307 teachers of science and mathematics subjects attending SESEMAT training in Eastern Uganda participated in the study. The results revealed that the teachers were engaged in assessment (M = 17.04, SD = 2.00) and had moderate levels of knowledge of CTT (M = 10.19, SD = 2.23) and IRT (M = 17.5, SD = 3.50). Their levels of application of CTT (M = 28.08, SD = 3.85) and IRT (M = 6.86, SD = 1.47) were also moderate. The teachers reported that their schools had somewhat conducive environments for assessment (M = 14.37, SD = 3.44). In addition, school environment affected teachers assessment practices most ( = .211, t = 7.212, p < .05), knowledge of CTT also influenced teachers assessment practice, but less than the influence by environment ( = .112, t = 4.969, p < .05). In conclusion, enhancing the levels of knowledge and application of CTT and IRT as well as improving school assessment environment are paramount for meaningful engagement in assessment by teachers. The study recommended pre-service and in-service training of the teachers in CTT and IRT in addition to schools improving environments for effective teacher engagement and quality assessment.

Fostering Programming Practice through Games

Loss of motivation is one of the most prominent concerns in programming education as it negatively impacts time dedicated to practice, which is crucial for novice programmers. Of the distinct techniques introduced in the literature to engage students, gamification, is likely the most widely explored and fruitful. Game elements that intrinsically motivate students, such as graphical feedback and game-thinking, reveal more reliable long-term positive effects, but those involve significant development effort. This paper proposes a game-based assessment environment for programming challenges, built on top of a specialized framework, in which students develop a program to control the player, henceforth called Software Agent (SA). During the coding phase, students can resort to the graphical feedback demonstrating how the game unfolds to improve their programs and complete the proposed tasks. This environment also promotes competition through competitive evaluation and tournaments among SAs, optionally organized at the end by the teacher. Moreover, the validation of the effectiveness of Asura in increasing undergraduate students’ motivation and, consequently, the practice of programming is reported.