SBIR Phase I: A Value-based Approach for Quantifying Problem Solving Strategies

这个小型企业技术转移第一阶段研究项目将开发和实施一个在线绩效评估系统，用于量化科学问题解决的有效性，其中量化措施可以在解决问题的任务中标准化，允许跨个人、班级、学校和科学领域进行纵向比较。研究项目将得出一种度量标准，该度量标准将人工神经网络分析得出的对策略质量的估计与问题解决任务的战略结果相结合，以开发问题解决过程的基于价值的度量标准。这一指标还将提供一个强有力的衡量策略的价值，用来记录这一评估措施的有效性、实用性和通用性，使用从中学到大学的20多万个问题解决成绩的现有数据集。这样一个可扩展的形成性、总结性和程序性的学习评估系统将具有广泛的相关性，有助于帮助教师、学生学习和管理人员通过对学生解决问题进度的持续和实时形成性评估做出明智的数据驱动决策，这一维度在当今的课堂上并不经常或严格评估，但却是21世纪技能的关键组成部分。这一系统将影响科学教育的所有层面，并将允许对科学领域、教室、教师和学校系统的问题解决进行累积比较，从而有助于重新思考系统评估科学问题解决的方式，以及如何将传授这些技能的影响量化。该评估工具的商业化发展将由美国化学学会考试研究所、北京高等教育出版社和当地学区的另类教育项目参与推动。

This Small Business Technology Transfer Phase 1 research project will develop and implement an on-line performance-based assessment system for quantifying scientific problem solving effectiveness where quantitative measures can be normalized across problem solving tasks allowing longitudinal comparisons to be made across individuals, classes, schools and science domains. The research project will derive a metric that combine estimates of the quality of a strategy that are derived from artificial neural network analysis with the strategic outcomes on problem solving tasks to develop a value-based metric of the problem solving process. This metric will also provide a strong measure of the value of the strategy employed to document the validity, utility, and generality of this assessment measure using an existing dataset of over 200,000 problem solving performances that span grade levels from middle school through the university.Such an extensible formative, summative and programmatic assessment system of learning will have broad relevance for helping teachers to teach, students to learn, and administrators to make informed data-driven decisions through the continual, and real-time formative evaluation of students' problem solving progress, a dimension not frequently or rigorously assessed in today's classrooms, yet a critical component of 21st century skills. This system will impact all levels of science education and would allow cumulative comparisons of problem solving across science domains, classrooms, teachers and school systems thus helping to re-think the ways scientific problem solving is systemically assessed and how the impact of teaching these skills becomes quantified. The development of a commercialization pathway for this assessment tool will be facilitated by the involvement of the American Chemical Society Examinations Institute, the Higher Education Press in Beijing, and the Alternative Education Program of a local school district.