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

这项小型企业技术转移第一阶段的研究项目将开发和实施一个基于绩效的在线评估系统，用于量化科学问题解决的有效性，其中定量措施可以在解决问题的任务中标准化，从而在个人、班级、学校和科学领域之间进行纵向比较。该研究项目将推导出一种度量标准，将人工神经网络分析得出的战略质量估计与解决问题任务的战略成果结合起来，开发出一种基于价值的问题解决过程度量标准。该指标还将提供一个强有力的衡量策略的价值，该策略使用超过20万个解决问题的表现的现有数据集来记录该评估措施的有效性、实用性和普遍性。这些数据集涵盖了从中学到大学的各个年级。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，将广泛地帮助教师教学、学生学习，以及管理者通过对学生解决问题的进展进行持续的、实时的形成性评估，做出明智的数据驱动决策。在今天的课堂上，这一维度的评估并不频繁或严格，但却是21世纪技能的关键组成部分。该系统将影响所有层次的科学教育，并允许对科学领域、教室、教师和学校系统之间的问题解决能力进行累积比较，从而有助于重新思考系统评估科学问题解决能力的方式，以及如何量化教授这些技能的影响。美国化学会考试协会、北京高等教育出版社和当地学区的替代教育计划将促进这一评估工具商业化途径的发展。

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.