Professor Hua-Hua Chang of the Department of Educational Psychology has been awarded the 2017 E.F. Lindquist Award in recognition of his outstanding applied and theoretical research in the field of testing and measurement.

Presented jointly by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and American College Testing (ACT), the honor acknowledges a body of research of an empirical, theoretical, or integrative nature rather than a single study.

The award will be presented to Dr. Chang on April 29 at the AERA Awards Luncheon in San Antonio as part of the organization’s Annual Meeting, which takes place this year April 27 through May 1.

“I am deeply honored to receive this award,” said Chang.

Chang’s past honors include a Fulbright Senior Specialist Award, a Distinguished Senior Scholar Award from the College of Education, an Annual Award from the National Council on Measurement in Education, a Significant Contribution Award from AERA’s Division D, and a Chang Jiang Scholar Chair Professorship from the Ministry of Education of China

Recently, Chang and his colleagues have developed various techniques to combine cognitive diagnosis with Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) to help classroom education and online learning. The team’s NSF-funded research has shown promising results in utilizing CAT to help low-performing students in the STEM field. In addition, Chang’s newly funded NSF project will focus on detection of learning in cognitive diagnosis.

Chang is also leading a group of graduate students in the development of cutting-edge techniques to support the Chinese Language Proficiency Test (HSK), the world's second largest language proficiency exam. His research team has developed a preliminary version of the Web-based CAT HSK exam. This system enables tailored selection of items for different test-takers for a more efficient HSK test administration through reduced test length, more standardized service, and simplified test administration and data collection.

Chang said that through this system the Illinois campus could eventually host and be the support hub for the Web-based HSK test in North America.