Original Experimental Method to Evaluate Conceptual Students’ Knowledge (original) (raw)

A Computer Method to Study the Entirety of Students' Knowledge Acquired During an Educational Course

2010

This paper considers the experimental research of measuring interconnections between the basic concepts, acquired during completion of a course in Computer Architecture. A special computer technique for estimating of students' knowledge entirety was developed and successfully tested. An original mode of experimental data visualization is proposed. Several pedagogical regularities were revealed by assessing how students digested the main concepts of the course.

Evaluation of Conceptual Knowledge: Review of the Experimental Study

The main aim of the research is to study how studen ts link separate terms and concepts into common interrelated picture during learning a course. The evaluation was made before and after learning the discipline “Computer architecture”. Students were offered to combine pairs of basic related terms from the predefined list and to specify a type of every relationship. Computer processing of the obtained files with results allowed to form independent groups of interrelated concepts (clusters) and also to produce some statistical characteristics of student s’ knowledge structure. Derived numeric gauge of knowledge organization can be accepted as some measure of learning success. It was discovered that according to experimental results several types of learners can be marked out.

Using a Concept Map to Represent the Composition of Knowledge in an Introductory Programming Course

Information Systems Education Journal, 2020

Concept mapping, a tool originally developed to facilitate student learning by organizing and visualizing key concepts and their relationships, can also facilitate communication and knowledge sharing among faculty and administrators about the composition of courses. In this paper, the authors describe a specific application of visualizing the knowledge contained in an introductory programming course of an undergraduate Computer Information Systems program. The authors show how representing the knowledge structure of a course as a network of concepts using a concept map can enable the faculty to assess the breadth and depth of the knowledge imparted through the course. The authors discuss how a concept map that depicts the composition of a course can function as a useful instructional tool to assess and improve the quality of instruction that may enable meaningful learning among students.

Exploring of students' knowledge using the Concept Inventory Test at Technical University

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) test has been widely used to investigate students' concept and understanding of introductory mechanics. It can be used to monitor the preconceptions, misconceptions and development of the students' conceptual understanding on mechanics. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the entering engineering students' prior knowledge in key concepts of mechanics in introductory physics using Concept Inventory Test at Technical University. Our findings have revealed absence of basic knowledge in the field of physics. Due to the fact that the testing revealed that students have problems with reading comprehension, graph interpretation, mathematical relationship, it is necessary for the future to pay attention not only to physics as a subject but also to skills related to maths and to overall engineering studies – to STEM education. Video analysis and simulations (VAS method) of problem tasks using interactive programme Tracker is one of the methods that considerably helps to form conceptual thinking and to develop manual skills and intellectual capabilities of students and finally at the same time eliminates misconceptions. Using videos and other multimedia aids affects in a positive manner the level of the students' knowledge and understanding of physical phenomena.

Evaluating Student Understanding of Core Concepts in Computer Architecture

Many studies have demonstrated that students tend to learn less than instructors expect in CS1. In light of these studies, a natural question is: to what extent do these results hold for subsequent, upper-division computer science courses? In this paper we describe our work in creating high-level con- cept questions for an upper-division computer architecture course. The questions were designed and agreed upon by subject-matter and teaching experts to measure desired min- imum proficiency of students post-course. These questions were administered to four separate computer architecture courses at two different institutions: a large public univer- sity and a small liberal arts college. Our results show that students in these courses were indeed not learning as much as the instructors expected, performing poorly overall: the per-question average was only 56%, with many questions showing no statistically significant improvement from pre- course to post-course. While these results follow the trend from CS1 courses, they are still somewhat surprising given that the courses studied were taught using research-based pedagogy that is known to be effective across the CS cur- riculum. We discuss implications of our findings and offer possible future directions of this work.