Education and demonstration – Computer logic – operation – or programming instruction
Reexamination Certificate
1999-06-23
2001-11-27
Cheng, Joe H. (Department: 3713)
Education and demonstration
Computer logic, operation, or programming instruction
C322S066000, C322S066000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06322366
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a computer system for managing and assisting in instruction or education particularly of younger students.
2. Background Art
The prior art contains a number of computer systems for managing and assisting in the instruction students. A typical system includes a network wherein administrators can monitor student progress, course curriculum and teacher performance. Teachers can individualize instruction for students based upon their recorded progress. Listed instructional materials can be categorized by grade level or objective to assist in lesson planning. Generally these prior art systems are designed to administer tests and homework to students and record the scores. Such systems generally have one or more deficiencies such as being unsuitable for managing instruction of younger students of preschool age and the first few years of school.
SUMMARY OF INVENTION
An instructional management software application for management of instruction in multilevel instructional settings in accordance with the present invention includes components providing supervision, assessment, planning, communication, and continuing education.
The supervision of instruction in early childhood education programs is generally carried out by an educational specialist or other administrator who reviews lesson plans, communications to parents about children's progress, classroom assessment practices, and other teaching activities. In the instructional management software application these reviews can be carried out electronically. The administrator can view any teacher's lesson plans as stored in a database, e-mail comments about the plan or make changes to a plan. Also the administrator can examine a teacher's anecdotal notes documenting children's development, or teacher communications to parents. Asynchronous communications provided by e-mail enable the administrator to communicate with the teacher without disrupting the teaching process.
Further the enablement of electronic review and other supervisory functions provides improved supervision effectiveness and efficiency. In many cases supervisors must travel long distances to carry out their supervisory functions. For example, in some Head Start programs some of the centers where teaching occurs may be more than 100 miles from administrative offices. The ability to carry out electronic supervision reduces travel costs, saves administrator time, and makes it possible to obtain the kind of information necessary for effective supervision on a continuing basis.
Another feature involves the relationship between the assessment and the planning of instructional activities to promote learning. The assumption that instruction should be based on assessment results indicating the kinds of capabilities that an individual is ready to learn is fundamental to sound educational practice. By providing an electronic link between assessment and planning through mathematical algorithms using measurement theory with constructs related to instructional planning, improvement is made in the efficiency of assessment and the quality of informed decisions about what a child will be ready to learn as development progresses.
A unique tool makes it possible to generate estimates of a child's development greatly reducing the time demands typically associated with the assessment process. When a student initially enrolls in a class, the teacher uses input from parents or other teachers, or from a small sample of observations to make a judgment about the child's development score in a particular developmental area. When the judgment is entered such as by sliding a scroll bar to a point reflecting the estimated ability or entering a number or other indication of estimated ability, a mathematical model is used to estimate the child's ability to perform each of the capabilities in the developmental area of interest within a developmental scale or level to which the child is assigned. Subsequently, the suitability status of a child's capabilities are updated by a teacher indicating that a particular capability has or has not been achieved. The teacher makes these updates based upon work samples, direct observation, performance on software, performance on a standardized test, or in other ways. Thus students of long standing will already have a record of their ability to perform various learning capabilities entered in the system. The mathematical algorithm used to estimate an ability score for the student is based upon item response theory, which is widely used in the field of educational measurement. The use of item response theory enables the estimation of a probability that an examinee or student will perform a test item or capability correctly using the estimated or previously recorded ability score of the examinee and certain recorded parameters of the learning capabilities. This is an improvement over the prior art technique using only standardized tests to determine what a child knows.
Item response theory holds that straight number scores of correct answers in a test may not accurately reflect the learning development of the examinee since some of the questions in the test may more closely reflect the ability than others. For example suppose one student correctly answers the fifteen questions on an exam that best reflect the ability while another student correctly answers the fifteen least reflective questions on the exam. Item response theory holds that the first student has a higher learning development score than the second student even though both students had the same number of correct answers. Thus item response theory can assign different discrimination parameters for the questions on the exam and these parameters thus weight the correct answers to produce a score, herein called “ability score” or “DL score” (developmental level score), reflecting each student's learning development.
A student's ability score is computed using item response theory based upon the learning capabilities which have been accomplished, or based upon the estimate of the learning ability of the student. There are a variety of well know methods for computing a score based upon item response theory. A publication, David Thissen et al., “Item Response Theory for Scores on Tests including Polychotomous Items with Ordered Responses”,
The L.L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory University of North Carolina, Research Report Number
94-2, May 1994, describes several methods of computing item response theory scores and mentions various other publications describing such methods. One particular suitable method described in Thissen et al. employs a table developed by an averaging or other computational estimation technique for each possible score. According to Thissen et al., the standard deviation of actual item response theory scores from the average item response score for a given summed score has been found to be acceptably small. Thus an estimated input of a student's ability can be in the form of a summed score or converted into a summed score which is then looked up in the average table to determine an estimated item response theory or ability score for the student. When the actual achievements of a student for all learning capabilities are recorded, the item response theory ability score for the student can be computed by use of the average table or by actual weighted summation of achieved capabilities. This item response theory ability score is shown in the screens and reports as a developmental level (DL) score. Other types scores can also be computed by conventional algorithms or tables, such as percentile ranking, normal curve equivalent (NCE) score, standard score, etc.
Initially there is compiled for each developmental level a list of items or learning capabilities with corresponding parameters including a difficulty factor and a discrimination factor for each learning capability. Developmental level generally refers to a grouping of students such as by age, grade o
Bergan John Richard
Bergan John Robert
Cole Kerrie L.
Assessment Technology Inc.
Cheng Joe H.
Harris Chanda
Marks Donald W.
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