Automated estimation of item difficulty for multiple-choice tests: An application of word embedding techniques     

Fu-Yuan Hsu  Hahn-Ming Lee  Tao-Hsing Chang  Yao-Ting Sung 《Information processing & management》2018,54(6):969-984

Pretesting is the most commonly used method for estimating test item difficulty because it provides highly accurate results that can be applied to assessment development activities. However, pretesting is inefficient, and it can lead to item exposure. Hence, an increasing number of studies have invested considerable effort in researching the automated estimation of item difficulty. Language proficiency tests constitute the majority of researched test topics, while comparatively less research has focused on content subjects. This paper introduces a novel method for the automated estimation of item difficulty for social studies tests. In this study, we explore the difficulty of multiple-choice items, which consist of the following item elements: a question and alternative options. We use learning materials to construct a semantic space using word embedding techniques and project an item's texts into the semantic space to obtain corresponding vectors. Semantic features are obtained by calculating the cosine similarity between the vectors of item elements. Subsequently, these semantic features are sent to a classifier for training and testing. Based on the output of the classifier, an estimation model is created and item difficulty is estimated. Our findings suggest that the semantic similarity between a stem and the options has the strongest impact on item difficulty. Furthermore, the results indicate that the proposed estimation method outperforms pretesting, and therefore, we expect that the proposed approach will complement and partially replace pretesting in future.  相似文献   

Teachers' beliefs and technology acceptance concerning smart mobile devices for SMART education in South Korea     

Junghoon Leem  Eunmo Sung 《British journal of educational technology : journal of the Council for Educational Technology》2019,50(2):601-613

Teachers' beliefs are a major factor in the effective use of new technology in teaching and learning. Recently, smart mobile devices (SMDs) such as smartphones, smart pads and tablet computers have been responsible for introducing broad innovations into the education field as Self-directed, Motivated, Adaptive, Resources-enriched, Technology embedded education in South Korea. Teachers' beliefs and technology acceptance concerning SMDs in South Korea can be either a facilitator or a barrier to the use of SMDs in the classroom. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors of teachers' beliefs concerning SMDs, and to examine teachers' technology acceptance of SMDs in their lessons. To address these goals, 378 primary and 390 secondary teachers participated in a survey with a 25-item paired adjective questionnaire and a 12-item technology acceptance questionnaire. A series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and multiple regressions were applied for the statistical analysis. The results indicate that teachers' beliefs were consistently revealed the five factors of immediacy, interest, interactivity, instability and inconvenience. Regarding the effect of the technology acceptance of SMDs on teachers' beliefs, the factors of instability, inconvenience and interactivity strongly related to the perceived usefulness and ease of use of SMDs. This finding indicates that teachers' beliefs that SMDs are unstable or uncomfortable can be the main barrier to the use of technology in the classroom.  相似文献   

Small-scale event sport tourism: A case study in sustainable tourism     

Heather J. Gibson  Kyriaki Kaplanidou  Sung Jin Kang 《Sport Management Review》2012,15(2):160-170

Scholars have suggested that small-scale sports events may be a sustainable form of tourism development for communities (e.g., Higham, 1999). The purpose of this study was to examine six small-scale sports events and the work of a local sports commission in the context of the three pillars of sustainability: economic, social, and environmental. Small-scale sports events are largely competitor or parent-as-spectator based, often annual, and attract little media attention. The six events were: a marathon, Senior Games, archery, soccer, softball, and swimming. The participants or spectators of the six events were surveyed onsite or online over an 18-month period and additional data from the sports commission, where relevant, were included. Sample sizes ranged from n = 68 to n = 447. The results suggest that a small-scale sports event portfolio consistent with a community's infrastructure and human and cultural capital may be a viable form of sustainable tourism development.  相似文献   

Change Management: Term Confusion and New Classifications     

Sung Pil Kang 《Performance Improvement》2015,54(3):26-32

This article addresses two key aspects of change management and the notional confusion that occurs resulting from two different uses of the term change management. The author proposes new terms—macro change management and micro change management—for the two uses of the term change management. He then compares these two terms based on their attributes, comprising definition, target, focus, and roles of change agents including required competencies. The article concludes with explanations as to why change management notional clarification and term elaboration are important for the human performance technology field.  相似文献   

Uncertainty analysis for peer assessment: oral presentation skills for final year project     

Ho Sung Kim 《European Journal of Engineering Education》2014,39(1):68-83

Peer assessment plays an important role in engineering education for an active involvement in the assessment process, developing autonomy, enhancing reflection, and understanding of how to achieve the learning outcomes. Peer assessment uncertainty for oral presentation skills as part of the FYP assessment is studied. Validity and reliability for complex assessments were conceptualised in the context of quantification, hierarchical system of uncertainties, aleatory uncertainty, and epistemic uncertainty. Systems as assessment methods were also conceptualised to define elements (i.e. examiner, examinee, and difficulty) as variables or/and constants, and to study the uncertainty behaviour of the peer assessment within the framework of the parametric uncertainty model. As a result, a singularity, at which the hierarchical structure of uncertainties breaks down, and its related behaviour were theoretically predicted and experimentally verified. Also, a validity paradox, when the ‘difficulty’ level is sufficiently lowered, was found to be possible and verified for oral presentation skills. It may be useful for understanding fundamental characteristics of the peer assessment in which epistemic uncertainties are dependent on how the assessment is close to the singularity point.  相似文献   

Rethinking the pattern of external policy referencing: media discourses over the ‘Asian Tigers’’ PISA success in Australia,Germany and South Korea     

Florian Waldow  Keita Takayama  Youl-Kwan Sung 《比较教育学》2014,50(3):302-321

The article compares how the success of the ‘Asian Tiger’ countries in PISA, especially PISA 2009, was depicted in the media discussion in Australia, Germany and South Korea. It argues that even in the times of today's ‘globalised education policy field’, local factors are important in determining whether or not a country becomes a reference society for educational reform. The article aims to uncover some of these factors, identifying the globally disseminated stereotypes about Asian education, economic relations and the sense of ‘crisis’ induced through the relative position and change of position in PISA league tables in the countries in question.  相似文献   

Research trends in teens’ health information behaviour: a review of the literature     

Sung Un Kim  Sue Yeon Syn 《Health information and libraries journal》2014,31(1):4-19

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Japanese neo‐nationalism and an idea of an East Asian community     

Suh Sung 《Inter-Asia Cultural Studies》2013,14(4):609-615

Abstract

The paper explains the relationship between Japan and its neighboring countries, and the influence of Japanese neo‐nationalism on the idea of an East Asian community.  相似文献   

Improved thermal performance of a hydronic radiant panel heating system by the optimization of tube shapes     

Young T. Chae  Kwang Ho Lee  Jae Sung Park 《浙江大学学报(A卷英文版)》2011,12(6):428-437

The thermal performance enhancement of the hydronic radiant floor heating system by tube shape refinements is investigated in this paper. Both analytical and detailed numerical modelings are carried out to predict the performance of the radiant system. While the simple analytical model briefly investigates the possibility of the effect of the tube shape improvement with the parametric analysis, the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code (Ansys/CFX) is used to perform the detailed 3D analysis under different tube shape conditions. The fin thickness, the number of fins, and the tube thermal conductivity turn out to have significant effects on the radiant system performance. The potential energy saving impacts of the tube shape refinements are also discussed. The tube shape improvement turns out to increase the floor surface temperature and to decrease the hot water temperature drop across the system, resulting in heating energy savings.  相似文献   

Compositional question answering: A divide and conquer approach     

Hyo-Jung Oh  Ki-Youn Sung  Myung-Gil Jang  Sung Hyon Myaeng 《Information processing & management》2011

This paper describes how questions can be characterized for question answering (QA) along different facets and focuses on questions that cannot be answered directly but can be divided into simpler ones so that they can be answered directly using existing QA capabilities. Since individual answers are composed to generate the final answer, we call this process as compositional QA. The goal of the proposed QA method is to answer a composite question by dividing it into atomic ones, instead of developing an entirely new method tailored for the new question type. A question is analyzed automatically to determine its class, and its sub-questions are sent to the relevant QA modules. Answers returned from the individual QA modules are composed based on the predetermined plan corresponding to the question type. The experimental results based on 615 questions show that the compositional QA approach outperforms the simple routing method by about 17%. Considering 115 composite questions only, the F-score was almost tripled from the baseline.  相似文献