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In response to my post "Do 'Alien Species' Exist in the Universe?" Ian Reid wrote:

 "Prof Hake . . . . has had a methodological issue with the mainstream of educational psychology that traces back to a disciplinary disposition to avoid 'test-retest' data.  At least 50 years ago most in ed psych were taught to avoid 'change scores' because they have two sources of error and are thus less reliable than single assessment data."

 Unfortunately "what ed psych were taught" has been shown over and over again to be patently incorrect. The seminal edict "How we should measure 'change'- or should we?" has been countered in "Should We Measure Change? YES!" [Hake (2007)] and "The Impact of Concept Inventories On Physics Education and It's Relevance For Engineering Education" [Hake (2011a)].

 In addition, in a post "Academically Adrift?" [Hake (2011b)] I wrote [bracketed by lines 

"HHHHH. . . . ."; see that post for reverences other than Chronbach & Furby (1970), Hake (2004a), National Academies (2008), and NCSU (2011).

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

In sharp contrast to the invalid (e.g., Student Evaluations of Teaching - for a critique see Hake (2005b)), and the indirect and general-thinking measures listed above is the *direct* measure of students' higher-level *domain-specific* learning through pre/post testing using (a) valid and consistently reliable tests *devised by disciplinary experts*, and (b) traditional courses as controls.

 Such pre/post testing, pioneered by economists (Paden & Moyer 1969) and physicists (Halloun & Hestenes 1985a,b), is rarely employed in higher education, in part because of the tired old canonical objections that have prevailed ever since Chronbach & Furby's (1970) "How we should measure 'change' - or should we?" and were more recently lodged by Suskie (2004), and countered by Hake (2004b, 2011b) and Scriven (2004).

 Despite the naysayers and its apparent dismissal by a large segment of the evaluation community [e.g., Shavelson & Huang (2003), Suskie (2004a,b), Hersh (2005), Shavelson et al. (2008),  Shavelson (2009), Benjamin et al. (2009), Chun (2011), CAE (2011)], formative pre/post testing is gradually gaining a foothold in introductory astronomy, biology, chemistry, economics, earth sciences, engineering, math, and physics courses - see, e.g., Hake (2004a), National Academies (2008), and NCSU (2011) for references.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

 Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University; Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands; President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII); LINKS TO: Academia <http://bit.ly/a8ixxm>; Articles <http://bit.ly/a6M5y0>; Blog <http://bit.ly/9yGsXh>; Facebook <http://on.fb.me/XI7EKm>; GooglePlus <http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE>; Google Scholar <http://bit.ly/Wz2FP3>; Linked In <http://linkd.in/14uycpW>; Research Gate <http://bit.ly/1fJiSwB>; Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs <http://bit.ly/9nGd3M>; Twitter <http://bit.ly/juvd52>.

REFERENCES [URLs shortened by <http://bit.ly/> and accessed on 19 Jan 2014.]

Cronbach, L. & L. Furby. 1970. "How we should measure 'change'- or should we?" Psychological Bulletin 74: 68-80, an abstract is online at <http://bit.ly/LqCSHy>.

 Hake, R.R. 2004a. "Re: Measuring Content Knowledge," POD posts of 14 &15 Mar 2004, online at  <http://bit.ly/hwvI7t > and <http://bit.ly/eXPBdE>.

 Hake, R.R. 2007. “Should We Measure Change? Yes!” online as a 2.6 MB pdf at <http://bit.ly/d6WVKO>. To appear as a chapter in "Evaluation of Teaching and Student Learning in Higher Education" (in preparation).

 Hake, R.R. 2011a. "The Impact of Concept Inventories On Physics Education and It's Relevance For Engineering Education," invited talk, 8 August, second annual NSF-sponsored "National Meeting on STEM Concept Inventories," Washington, D.C., online as an 8.7 MB pdf at <http://bit.ly/nmPY8F> or as ref. 64 at <http://bit.ly/a6M5y0>. The abstract and link were transmitted to various discussion lists and are also on my blog "Hake'sEdStuff" at <http://bit.ly/pYmIkP> with a provision for comments.

 Hake, R.R. 2011b. "Academically Adrift?" online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at <http://bit.ly/gwJD0W>. Post of 29 Jan 2011 10:00:09-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold.  The abstract and link to the complete post were transmitted to various discussion lists are also online on my blog "Hake'sEdStuff" at  <http://bit.ly/hVYzHI> with a provision for comments.

 Hake, R.R. 2014. "Do 'Alien Species' Exist in the Universe?" online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at <http://bit.ly/1kHEm0i>. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists and are also on my blog "Hake'sEdStuff" at <http://bit.ly/1dCUNHr>.

 Labov, J.B., S.R. Singer, M.D. George, H.A. Schweingruber, & M.L. Hilton. 2009. "Effective Practices in Undergraduate STEM Education Part 1: Examining the Evidence," CBE Life Sci Educ 8(3): 157-161; online at <http://bit.ly/cRc0JC>. This is a discussion of the "Workshop on Linking Evidence and Promising Practices in STEM Undergraduate Education" [National Academies (2008)].

 National Academies. 2008. Meeting 2 of 13-14 October containing commissioned papers online at <http://bit.ly/Ku9NKD>. See also the commentary on these workshops by Labov et al. (2009).

 NCSU. 2011. "Assessment Instrument Information Page," Physics Education R & D Group, North Carolina State University"; online at <http://bit.ly/9gfUpY>.