Staff Profiles
Dr Kelvin Lai
Senior Research Fellow
BA, Advanced Dip Ed, MEd University of Hong Kong, Dip Ed Chinese University of Hong Kong, MSc Oxon, PhD Melb
Dr Kelvin Lai is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research in the Assessment and Reporting research program.
He oversees the work of the psychometric support staff working on major projects for Assessment Services. He has taken an active role in a wide range of projects such as GAMSAT (both UK and Australia), ISAT, MAPKEE, ATISS, ALSET and other comparison studies related to HAST, ISAT, and ALSET. In the last two years, he has been attending courses on the use of ACCESS, CRYSTAL, SAS programming and negotiation skills. He is also looking forward to other chances in ACER to further develop his skills.
Dr Lai obtained his doctorate from the University of Melbourne. His thesis focused on modifying the Rasch model to apply to multicomponent tasks in performance assessment. He attained his Masters degree in Applied Statistics from the University of Oxford, with a result described as one of the best since the establishment of the Department of Statistics.
Dr Lai gained substantial teaching experience while working as a Mathematics teacher and a lecturer in Statistics in Hong Kong. He has worked as a lecturer at RMIT and the University of Melbourne, teaching postgraduate subjects in Statistical Method, Research Design, Assessment and Evaluation. He was an item writer and examiner for the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority starting in 1971.
He has been analysing data and designing research in a number of projects related to various Hong Kong and Australian Education Departments, including the use of Rasch model in analysing assessment data.
His obtained his first degree with First Class Honours, majoring in Mathematics and Statistics and passed his Masters degree (with distinction) in Educational Evaluation.