NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
Back to results
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
ERIC Number: EJ1330717
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022-Mar
Pages: 28
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1946-6226
EISSN: N/A
Identifying Informatively Easy and Informatively Hard Concepts
Wiegand, R. Paul; Bucci, Anthony; Kumar, Amruth N.; Albert, Jennifer; Gaspar, Alessio
ACM Transactions on Computing Education, v22 n1 Article 7 Mar 2022
In this article, we leverage ideas from the theory of coevolutionary computation to analyze interactions of students with problems. We introduce the idea of "informatively" easy or hard concepts. Our approach is different from more traditional analyses of problem difficulty such as item analysis in the sense that we consider Pareto dominance relationships within the multidimensional structure of student-problem performance data rather than average performance measures. This method allows us to uncover not just the problems on which students are struggling but also the variety of difficulties different students face. Our approach is to apply methods from the Dimension Extraction Coevolutionary Algorithm to analyze problem-solving logs of students generated when they use an online software tutoring suite for introductory computer programming called "problets." The results of our analysis not only have implications for how to scale up and improve adaptive tutoring software but also have the promise of contributing to the identification of common misconceptions held by students and thus, eventually, to the construction of a concept inventory for introductory programming.
Association for Computing Machinery. 2 Penn Plaza Suite 701, New York, NY 10121. Tel: 800-342-6626; Tel: 212-626-0500; Fax: 212-944-1318; e-mail: acmhelp@acm.org; Web site: http://toce.acm.org/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: 2038406; 1504634; 1502564