Designing Effective Feedback for Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment in Web-based Learning Environment

Abstract

Assessment is useful for students to improve their learning and for teachers to adjust their teaching practice. However, most traditional assessments do not provide useful information to improve learning and teaching. Recently, cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA) which is designed to measure specific knowledge structures and processing skills in students has attracted a great deal of attentions. In this paper, we apply a CDA approach in fraction problems to 144 sixth grade students in an elementary school in Japan. We show how CDA can provide detailed information about learners’ strengths and weaknesses and discuss the applicability of web-based CDA for providing effective feedback.