lifelong competence development: on the advantages of formal competence-performance modeling
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Learning Networks for Lifelong Competence Development March 30 – 31, 2006, Sofia, Bulgaria. Lifelong Competence Development: On the Advantages of Formal Competence-Performance Modeling - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Lifelong Competence Development: On the Advantages of Formal
Competence-Performance Modeling
Michael D. Kickmeier-Rust, Dietrich Albert, & Christina SteinerCognitive Science Section, Department of Psychology
University of Graz, Austria
Learning Networks for Lifelong Competence Development
March 30 – 31, 2006, Sofia, Bulgaria
Lifelong Competence Development
- Lifelong competence development is undoubtedly an important and ambitious aim for the information and knowledge society
- This presentation intends to introduce and motivate Knowledge Space Theory and the Competence-Performance Approach as tools
to facilitate the development and assessment of competencies over
time
Introduction:Competence vs. Competency
- Competence
- vague
- broad and intangible
- complex vs. simple
- hard to be modeled on a formal basis
- Competency
- small and unique
- still intangible
- easy to be modeled on a formal basis
Introduction:Competence vs. Performance
- Often the terms competence/y and performance are mixed-up
- Often it is assumed that competencies could directly be observed or assessed
- Inflation of competencies because different assessment methods measure different competencies or sets of competencies
- e.g., maintain an aircraft, write a scientific article, pass a certain school exam
- Incomparability of different assessment methods
- e.g., school exam vs. assessment on the job
Introduction:Competence vs. Performance
- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language states:
“Competence means the state or quality of being adequately or well qualified; a specific range of skill, knowledge or ability”
- This and many other definitions have in common that they describe competence as
- abstract
- latent
- not directly observable
Introduction:Competence vs. Performance
- Chomsky (1965) distinguished latent competence and observable performance in linguistic theory
- Today, this distinction between competence and performance has a much wider application e.g., in the field of knowledge and learning psychology
- competence is an unobservable quality or ability
- performance is the observable behavior in specific situations (e.g., an exam), which is determined by one specific competency or by a set of competencies
Why distinguish competence and performance?
- Example 1: Exam in trigonometry Students might be allowed to use a mathematical formulary and a pocket calculator
(1) If two students master a certain task of the exam, can we conclude that these students do have the same competencies
with regard to the task?
- Student 1 might have the necessary competencies to master the task without using the formulary
- Student 2 maybe mastered the task only by chance, incidentally choosing the right formula from the formulary
Why distinguish competence and performance?
- Example 2: Exam in trigonometry Students might be allowed to use a mathematical formulary and a pocket calculator
(2) If three students fail in a certain task, can we conclude that these students lack the same competencies?
- Student 1 might lack the competence to fully understand the task and its formulation
- Student 2 might fully understand the task and also might be able to choose the right formula, but maybe this student is not able to use a required function of the calculator
- Student 3 might have the necessary competencies to master the entire
task but might have problems to concentrate on the tasks during an exam
Lifelong learning?
- In terms of tracking and assessing lifelong competence development
- we should make sure to measure competencies independent from assessment methods
- refer to probably standardized competencies
- refer to defined developmental / learning paths
Knowledge Space Theory
- A well-elaborated theory that may help to achieve these goals is Knowledge Space Theory by Doignon & Falmagne (1985, 1999) and its extensions
- KST provides a set-theoretic framework to organize and model the knowledge / competencies in a given domain of knowledge by utilizing Surmise Relations, which establish Knowledge Spaces
- KST in its initial form is only a behavoristic approach focusing on problems (e.g., test tasks), which can be mastered or not
- From mastering a certain problem, KST allows to assume the mastering of other problems and from failing in a certain problem, KST allows to assume a failing in other problems
Knowledge Space Theory
- Example: Five problems from the domain “basic algebra”:
- a: addition
- b: subtraction
- c: multiplication
- d: division
- e: simple linear equations
Q = {a, b, c, d, e}
Knowledge Space Theory
- Example: Prerequisite Relation for the domain Q = {a, b, c, d, e}
Knowledge Space Theory
- Example: We can establish a Knowledge Space, which does not contain all of the 25 possible Knowledge States but only 8
Knowledge Space Theory
- Advantages:
- Reduction of the number of possible Knowledge States and definition of meaningful learning paths
- Mathematical properties:
- reflexive
- transitive
- anti-symmetric
Competence-Performance Approach
- KST is purely behavioristic focusing on observable performance
- CPA (Korrosy, 1997, 1999) is an extension of KST, which distinguishes latent competencies and observable performance
- We have a set E of abstract competencies that are relevant for a domain
- The Competence State is the collection of a person’s competencies
- As in KST, Prerequisite Relations are described on the set of competencies establishing a competence structure C, which contains all possible competence states
Competence-Performance Approach
- Example: Four competencies from the domain “basic algebra”:
- A: addition
- B: subtraction
- C: multiplication
- D: division
E = {A, B, C, D}
Competence-Performance Approach
- Example: Prerequisite Relation for the competencies in the domain E = {A,B,C,D}
Competence-Performance Approach
- Example: We can establish a Competence Space, which does not contain all of the 24 possible Competence States but only 7
Competence-Performance Approach
- Unfortunately, we cannot observe this…
Representation and Interpretation Functions enable to map test items / tasks to the competencies
We can determine a person’s Competence State
We can determine the required competencies to master a specific task
No 1-to-1 mapping required
Competence-Performance Approach
- Example: Two tasks from the domain “basic algebra”:
- a: multiplication problem
- b: solving linear equations
Q = {a, b}
Representation Function
Problem Competence State
a {A, B, C}
b {A, B, C, D}
Competence-Performance Approach
- Example:
- Solved a but not b
- Solved a and b
- Solved not a and not b
- Solved b and not a
Advantages
- Modeling a domain of knowledge on a formal basis
- Referring to clearly defined and unique competencies
- Mapping different assessment methods to the same set of competencies
- Efficient adaptive testing
- Efficient adaptive teaching
- Modeling of individual learning path
- Computable
So what about errors?
Careless errors
Lucky Guesses
- Besides the deterministic approach there are also probabilistic approaches
Applications
- Adaptive, personalized eLearning (RATH, APeLS, EASEL, iCLASS, ELeGI, ELEKTRA)
- Organizational competencies / knowledge (Know-Center)
- Research tool (e.g., in child development)
Applications
- Commercial eLearning platform ALEKS (www.aleks.com)
Image courtesy of ALEKS CorporationSanta Ana, CA, USA
THANK YOU