Assessment of teaching and learning by mixed diagnostic testing

Abstract

The paper deals with assessment of educational process. Specifically, monitoring and testing of students' knowledge, of professional and personal skills/abilities are in the focus of the study. A new assessment approach called Mixed Diagnostic Testing (MDT) is discussed in the paper. The approach combines two known testing concepts: unconditional testing and conditional testing. In the unconditional testing, each next question of the test sequence is independent of previous test results; in contrast with it the conditional testing includes a sequence of questions strongly connected with the previous test results. The proposed approach provides designing of an individual learning "trajectory" for each student. According to our hypothesis, such a trajectory is especially important since it allows personalizing the learning process, thus increasing its efficiency. The paper provides theoretical analysis of the MDT approach, as well as of its implementation in a certain academic course " Information technologies " . For preparing (constructing) of mixed diagnostic tests, experts' knowledge of specific subjects should be utilized. It is shown, that the use of MDT effectively supports and facilitates development of curriculum. The MDT reduces both time and cost expenses for organization and management of the educational process. Since the MDT may actually replace a teacher in the teacher's function as a consultant, the proposed approach is especially promising in the blended learning.