Education Recently, Harvard professors ceased giving final exams as part of their overall assessment of student performance (Strauss, 2010). In a radical transformation of official college policy, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to eliminate exams and require professors who wish to administer them to file an application form. The reverse used to be true: exams were the norm and professors wishing to opt-out would have to ask for permission. What

Performance Evaluation Methods for Instructors: Similar to the workplace, performance evaluation is an important aspect for the classroom environment in which the instructor is the rater and the students are the ratees. In today's classroom, instructors use basic combination of papers, tests, exams, cases, and class participation as the basis for assessment and then provide the formal appraisal in the form of a grade. Notably, a comprehensive student appraisal consists of

These assessment techniques may include open-ended or closed survey questions, interviews, structured observations by the teacher in the learning environment, and performance-based assignments like writing portfolios or role-plays ("Document ELL Progress," 2008, ELL Website). What are the benefits of using alternative assessments for ELL students? For native English speakers? For ELL students, particularly those whose written proficiency has not yet matched their oral proficiency, alternative assessment techniques give the student additional

Lead: Chinese students who study abroad used to be among the most sough-after workers in China. Now, they are increasingly facing barriers to employment. Negative stereotypes and the rising quality of domestic education have Chinese employers turning their backs on the once-venerated "sea turtles.' In many ways, their story encapsulates the cultural conflicts internal to China as the nation continues its rapid pace of globalisation. As recently as a few years

The shift toward standardized testing has failed to result in a meaningful reduction of high school dropout rates, and students with disabilities continue to be marginalized by the culture of testing in public education (Dynarski et al., 2008). With that said, the needs of students with specific educational challenges are diverse and complex, and the solutions to their needs are not revealed in the results of standardized testing (Crawford &

students properly prepare for difficult examinations and long papers like theses and dissertations? Students will encounter levels of difficulty in their studies that they may be not used to or unprepared for during their first several years of university. Therefore, it is important to properly prepare for the rigors of university academics. How the student prepares depends largely on his or her course load and the subject matter, as well