Project Proposal Talk

Problem Description-Create a student evaluation system (E-assessment) that accurately “shades” the level of students’ understanding and tests how well they grasp a certain subject. Because the system will enable teachers to recognize the specific areas that students don’t understand after a lesson, teachers will be able to better meet the needs of the students. The difficulty in creating such a system lies in being able to accurately identify the “frontier of understanding” from just a few test questions.

ApproachPrevious approaches:-Bayesian CAT program (only based on wrong or right)-Computer-Adaptive Testing (tailored testing) :

-adapts to testee’s level-uses an iterative algorithm-provides uniformly precise scores for most test-takers but all new items in the test must be pre-tested

My approach:-Traversing through a directed graph that maps out the main concepts of a subject, the test engine will figure what question to ask next depending on the current answer.-The algorithm should also be able to calculate the confidence of the student in knowing a certain subtopic and the confidence of the student’s level of mastery.

Methodology, Milestones & DeliverablesBy end of Fall quarter: 1) Create initial directed graph of topic2) Begin amassing data base of questions and problems3) Create a working algorithm that can create a test and evaluate answers.4) Apply for approval from UCLA Office for Protection of Research SubjectsBy end of Winter quarter:4) Refine both directed graph and algorithm 5) Begin testing part of research: get some feedback from test subjects By end of Spring quarter: 6) Conduct more tests7) Analyze experimental results8) Write final project thesis

Things that might prove to be hard: – Figuring out the best way to test students (figuring out an effective algorithm),

testing what they truly know (whether it be through analyzing answers or student confidence)

– How to test students without asking too many questions and boring them– Applying for approval and testing actual test subjects

Fall back plan / Testing-Since I will be testing as I go along, I can adjust goals and plans according to

success/failure-One aspect of the fall back plan concerns the subject testing. Since it is

human testing, the research has to go through OPRS for approval. Several possible ways to conduct testing is as follows:

1) Conduct testing among high school or middle school students who are currently taking topic of choice at school. Conduct both diagnostic test as well as survey to analyze whether the

test is effective. (Parent consent forms might be required)2) Using college students (and more advanced topic) so that only one set of consent is required 3) Doing an internet survey so that consent is less of a hassle (though we might receive more outliers due to inability to filter out unsuitable test subjects)

-Current plan might possibly include applying for all three possibilities and picking the most ideal plan later

Summary