The Design And Development Of Knowledge Structure Evaluation System

Several problems exist in current education system and environment. As the main tool to evaluate teaching and learning process, exams are mainly used to fulfill the needs of education management, judging teaching results of the teachers and selecting students for further education. However, the needs of teachers and students haven’t got enough attention in a long period. In this situation, this thesis tries to find a breakthrough and get a solution to solve these problems. After investigation, we find that teachers and students expect exams to be the summary of the past and the guide for the future. They want to get more information except results, such as the master of knowledge points and knowledge structure to find out the strength and weakness of teaching and learning. According to this feedback, they can improve teaching and learning process. Therefore, this thesis decides to focus on research of feedback based on knowledge structure, including how to get it, how to show it and how to use it effectively.About how to get it:This thesis tries to build a knowledge structure evaluation model to get the knowledge structure. This model focuses on how to get the master of knowledge points and how to organize them into a knowledge structure, by means of analyzing current information (including tests, subjects and students’performance). Then we designed and developed a Knowledge Structure Evaluation System based on this model, which achieved automated evaluation and personalized feedback. We put this model and system into actual educational situation for trial and modified it according to the complexity of actual situation.About how to show it:We learned from research of learning science. It reveals that the difference between experts and novices (students) is the way they "organize-memorize" the knowledge. Experts tend to organize knowledge into related, layered networks, while novices memorize them as small, separated points. Therefore, learning form concept map, showing experts’knowledge structure to novices helps them to find out the differences and find a way to improve their knowledge structure. About how to use it:We use the evaluation system to record knowledge structure after every exam, and provide a comparative view in chronological order. After this, students can see the improvements and a trend to approach the experts’knowledge structure eventually.