A New Process Phase Diagnostic Technique: Visualized Interface for Diagnosing Learning Progress

Introduction

The learning effectiveness a learner can achieve in an instructional process is highly relevant to the learner’s expertise in associate domain. The level of a learner’s expertise influences mental effort directly according to Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). Therefore, many diagnostic techniques of assessing expertise related factors had been developed over past decades. Under adaptive e-learning context a learner’s learning condition is required to be assessed in a process phase, real-time, and non-interfering approach which is not fulfilled by those diagnostic techniques presented in past studies. Hence, the purpose of this research is to design a new diagnostic technique suitable for adaptive e-learning context by improving the imperfections of previous diagnostic techniques. Furthermore, this new diagnostic technique is demonstrated with a visualized learning effort curve which is an effective user-friendly interface to enhance a learner’s decision making in an adaptive e-learning instructional process.

The literature review of past studies on diagnostic techniques of assessing expertise under static and dynamic conditions was conducted in order to identify the requirements and dimensions of a new dynamic diagnostic technique of assessing expertise under a process phase, real-time, and non-interfering base in the instructional process of adaptive e-learning. The requisite assessment mechanisms for individual dimensions of this new dynamic diagnostic technique were developed accordingly (Hsu et al., 2009). Based on this new dynamic diagnostic technique a situated experiment was applied on 165 university students. The experimental results were transformed into characteristic learning effort curves by the assessment mechanisms of this new developed process phase, real-time, and non-interfering diagnostic technique.