Diagnostic Models for Procedural Bugs in Basic Mathematics Skills.
Saved in:
| Title: | Diagnostic Models for Procedural Bugs in Basic Mathematics Skills. |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Brown, John Seely, Burton, Richard R., Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc., Cambridge, MA. |
| Peer Reviewed: | N |
| Page Count: | 66 |
| Publication Date: | 1977 |
| Sponsoring Agency: | Advanced Research Projects Agency (DOD), Washington, DC. Navy Personnel Research and Development Center, San Diego, CA. |
| Document Type: | Reports - Research |
| Descriptors: | Arithmetic, Basic Skills, Computation, Computer Assisted Instruction, Diagnostic Tests, Educational Diagnosis, Educational Games, Error Patterns, Learning, Mathematics Education, Remedial Mathematics, Teacher Education, Testing |
| Abstract: | A new diagnostic modeling system for automatically synthesizing a deep structure model of a student's misconceptions or bugs in his/her basic mathematics skills provides a mechanism for explaining why a student is making a mistake as opposed to simply identifying the mistake. This report consists of four sections. The first provides examples of the problems that must be handled by a diagnostic model. It then introduces procedural networks as a general framework for representing the knowledge underlying a skill. The second section discusses some of the pedagogical issues that have emerged from the use of diagnostic models within an instructional system. This discussion is framed in the context of a computer-based tutoring/gaming system developed to teach students and student teachers how to diagnose bugs strategically as well as how to provide a better understanding of the underlying structure of arithmetic skills. The third section describes our uses of an executable network as a tool for automatically diagnosing student behavior, for automatically generating "diagnostic" tests, and for judging the diagnostic quality of a given exam. Included in this section is a discussion of the success of this system in diagnosing 1300 school students from a data base of 20,000 test items. The last section discusses some future research directions. (Author/MN) |
| Entry Date: | 1979 |
| Accession Number: | ED159036 |
| Database: | ERIC |
| Abstract: | A new diagnostic modeling system for automatically synthesizing a deep structure model of a student's misconceptions or bugs in his/her basic mathematics skills provides a mechanism for explaining why a student is making a mistake as opposed to simply identifying the mistake. This report consists of four sections. The first provides examples of the problems that must be handled by a diagnostic model. It then introduces procedural networks as a general framework for representing the knowledge underlying a skill. The second section discusses some of the pedagogical issues that have emerged from the use of diagnostic models within an instructional system. This discussion is framed in the context of a computer-based tutoring/gaming system developed to teach students and student teachers how to diagnose bugs strategically as well as how to provide a better understanding of the underlying structure of arithmetic skills. The third section describes our uses of an executable network as a tool for automatically diagnosing student behavior, for automatically generating "diagnostic" tests, and for judging the diagnostic quality of a given exam. Included in this section is a discussion of the success of this system in diagnosing 1300 school students from a data base of 20,000 test items. The last section discusses some future research directions. (Author/MN) |
|---|
