A presentation from the STEM Annual Conference 2014.
Diversity is increasing among students entering university. We need to respond to this in teaching and in assessments. Adaptive assessments allow students to be presented with a series of questions at a suitable difficulty level based on the student’s cumulative performance in the assessment.
We assessed a group of students in biological sciences using a series of questions delivered through Questionmark Perception. Questions were grouped into three levels of difficulty based on trial results. One group of students was arbitrarily allocated to an adaptive version of the assessment; their performance in two questions determined the difficulty level of the next two questions; this was repeated until they had answered 10 questions. For comparison another group equivalent students was arbitrarily allocated to a control version consisting of random selection of 10 questions at any difficulty level.
Students who did the adaptive assessment were less likely to be given questions that were either too challenging or too easy in contrast with the control group of students. We conclude that adaptive testing can provide an appropriate challenge up to but not below or beyond a student’s academic capacity. This can be used to differentiate fairly and effectively among an intellectually diverse cohort of students.
