Assessment

I have extensive experience creating valid and reliable measures of student learning and teaching skills. These are described below.

For an overview of my research, see my publications, presentations, and workshops on the CV page.

Measurements of Student Learning

At World Learning (2016 to present)

    • Within QITABI 2, a USAID-funded early grade reading project in Lebanon:

      1. Collaborated, with members of the Ministry of Education and other experts, to create test items for that national test of foundational reading skills (EGRA and curriculum-based assessment) in English

      2. Contributed to ideation and development of digital teaching and learning materials for English classes, grades 1-6, with diagnostic assessments at the beginning of every unit and a formative assessment in every lesson

    • Through the OPEN Program courses I created, produced two courses, one on critical thinking and culture, and the other on content-based instruction/CLIL. These lead teachers through the process of assessing students' learning, including

      1. Video Rubrics for Assessment

      2. Video Tips for Creating Rubrics


Saint Louis University (2007-2015)

    • Led the revamping of the Masters curriculum and exam for the MA in Spanish (literature, linguistics, and pedagogy) at Saint Louis University (2010-2013)

    • As Director of Basic Languages, Spanish, led the design and writing of all exams and quizzes through collaboration with and coaching of the instructors (TAs, adjunct professors)

    • Participated in the conversion of the department's written placement test in Spanish to an adaptive, online test

    • Mentor for Dan Nickolai’s Ph.D. dissertation Increasing placement proficiency test reliability through data-driven criterion-reference adaptive assessments. Defended Spring 2015

    • Served on university-wide Undergraduate Student Learning Outcomes Task Force (2013-2015)

    • Participated in annual student placement process for incoming Spanish students


Employment Connection, https://www.employmentstl.org, Saint Louis, MO 2008

    • Created and administered an oral placement exam to determine if refugee applicants had minimal English competency to join job training workshops


University of Arizona (2002-2007)

    • Wrote, piloted, and implemented pre- and post-tests for the 141 subjects who fully completed online listening comprehension course

      1. Included listening comprehension

      2. Included novel use of the maze task to measure syntactical processing

    • Testing Monitor for Foreign and Heritage Language Placement Exams

    • University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, Summer 2004

    • Monitored testing for incoming freshman and graded and advised students taking the Heritage Spanish Exam


Literacy Volunteers of Tucson, Tucson, AZ, February 2007

  • Redesigned oral placement exam


University of Talca, Talca, Chile (1999-2001)

    • Rewrote departmental placement exam for reading classes, both for general reading and subject-specific tests

Measurements of Teacher Skills

At World Learning (2016 to present)

    • Led the selection and adaptation of a classroom observation tool to observe Economics and Entrepreneurship classes and clubs for grades 8-11 in Uzbekistan, via the USAID program Uzbekistan Youth Workforce Development and Entrepreneurship Activity


    • Led a team of 2 international and 4 Lebanese education specialists in the development of 14 instruments to measure what was happening in public school classrooms in Lebanon; instruments were approved by the Ministry of Education and World Bank


    • Co-led the program assessment of Asian University for Women's (Chittagong, Bangladesh) bridge program Pathways for Promise Program


    • Led the development of teacher competency framework for teachers of Arabic reading in grades 1-4 in Lebanon, in relation to the USAID program Quality Instruction towards Access and Basic Education Improvement (QITABI)


    • Adapted Depth of Reflection Rubric from my 2010 publication "Reciprocity in service learning: Intercultural competence through SLA studies" into the global online course and MOOC "Integrating Critical Thinking into the Exploration of Culture in an EFL Setting." More than 15,000 people in over 100 countries have applied this rubric to gauge their depth of reflection on teaching.


Conference Presentations Related to Assessment


Questions that engage critical thinking, TESOL-Kosovo (KETNET), Prishtina, Kosovo, June 2018.


Sex, status, nativeness and accents: Implications for testing and instruction, invited plenary talk at the National University Association of English Teachers (ANUPI) of Mexico conference, Huatulco, Mexico, October 2013.

Testing: Revisiting the why and the how, workshop for language teachers at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador, June 2008.

Foreign language listening comprehension online: Issues of testing method, training effects and motivation. Poster presented at AAAL (American Association of Applied Linguistics), Costa Mesa, CA, April 2007.


The maze task as learning activity and testing method at Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO), Honolulu, May 2006.

Publications Related to Assessment


McBride, K. (2008). Adaptive and maladaptive strategy use in computer-assisted language learning activities for listening comprehension. Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 34(1-2), 57-79.

Ph.D., Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 2007. Dissertation: The Effect of Rate of Speech and CALL [computer-assisted language learning] Design Features on EFL [English as a foreign language] Listening Comprehension and Use of Strategies