Johnson

If you run a t-test, ANOVA, or linear regression without checking one critical assumption first, your results could be completely wrong. That assumption is normality, and learning how to check whether your data is normally distributed is one of the most foundational skills in statistics. Many of the most common statistical tests assume that your … Read more

You walk out of your organic chemistry exam feeling like you just survived a car wreck. The class average was a 58. You scored a 67, and somehow that became a B+. If you have ever wondered how that transformation happened, you have already encountered grade curving in action. Grading on a curve is a … Read more

Short-answer and constructed-response items are assessment questions that require students to produce their own answers instead of choosing from a list. Teachers, curriculum coordinators, and test developers rely on these item types because they reveal student thinking in ways multiple-choice questions simply cannot. If you have ever read a student response and thought, “They clearly … Read more

If you have ever stared at a statistics output and wondered what that decimal number between -1 and +1 actually means, you are in the right place. A correlation coefficient is one of the most widely used statistical tools, yet it is also one of the most misunderstood. Researchers, students, and data analysts across every … Read more

Every teacher has been there. You spend hours writing what feels like a solid exam, hand it out, and then watch students bomb questions on material you barely covered. Or worse, you realize afterward that 40 of your 50 questions tested rote recall while only a handful pushed students into analysis or evaluation. I have … Read more

Assessing general education outcomes across a curriculum means collecting direct and indirect evidence of student learning, measuring that evidence against clearly written student learning outcomes (SLOs), and using the results to improve courses and programs. In practice, you define measurable outcomes, map them to courses, collect data through signature assignments and rubrics, analyze results, and … Read more

You spent weeks collecting data, drafting findings, and polishing your assessment report. You submitted it confidently. Then the reviewer comments came back, and suddenly you are revising, defending, or starting over. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Most professionals who write assessment reports, whether for academic accreditation, program evaluation, HR performance reviews, or … Read more

Knowing when to use repeated-measures ANOVA can make or break your statistical analysis. If you run the wrong test, you either lose statistical power or violate core assumptions that invalidate your results. In this guide, our team breaks down the exact study designs, assumptions, and decision rules that tell you whether repeated-measures ANOVA is the … Read more

Grading a test is only half the job. Once you enter those scores into your gradebook, the real work begins. Learning how to interpret a class score distribution after a test helps you understand whether your students actually learned the material, whether your test was fair, and which students need additional support before moving on. … Read more

Most multiple-choice questions should have 3 to 4 options — one correct answer and two or three plausible distractors. That is what the research consistently shows across roughly 80 years of psychometric studies, and it is the sweet spot where test reliability, writing efficiency, and student experience all converge. If you are an educator, instructional … Read more