Improving Student Performance Using Self-Assessment Tests

Testing is the most generic and perhaps most widely used mechanism for student assessment. Most tests are based on the classical test theory, which says that a student´s score is the sum of the scores obtained in all questions plus some kind of error. The most relevant is that the student test result depends heavily on the individual´s learning preferences or abilities and also on the actual test´s format. According to this theory, tests aren´t necessarily useful in intelligent educational systems, which require accurately obtaining the student´s knowledge state to guide the learning process. Yet the Web has created a new generation of intelligent systems-adaptive hypermedia systems which offer new types of instructional interaction. Educational AHSs adapt the learning process on the basis of the student´s learning preferences, knowledge, and availability. One such Web-based tool is Siette (the system of intelligent evaluation using rests), which infers student knowledge using adaptive testing.