Method for assessing testing difficulty in educational sphere

Abstract

The problem of testing in education is relevant for many countries. Testing solves three problems. The first task is to assess the quality of current training. The second task is to conduct a comparative analysis of learning outcomes. The third task is the management of the educational process in a particular educational institution and in the education sector. This determines the relevance of testing and the relevance of developing new methods for assessing test results. The article proposes a new method for assessing test results for different situations: “teacher– student”, computer test, virtual testing model, test on a mixed reality model and others. To solve the problem, a special quasi-sigmoidal function is introduced. It is analogous to the logistic function, but takes into account the peculiarities of real testing of students. The logistic function ranges from minus infinity to plus infinity. There are no negative assessments in education. The introduced function lies only in the positive range of the argument. It describes actual positive scores when testing students. The authors called this function the complexity function. With its help, the complexity of the subject is assessed according to the test results. To substantiate the method, the function of the logarithms of the odds, logistic regression and the resulting Rush method are investigated. The article notes two shortcomings of the Rush method. The testing principle has been defined for the new function, which is used to estimate complexity. The article introduces two new concepts: the test difficulty function and the integral test score. Integral assessment of testing is a smooth function and makes it possible to go from a stepwise dependence to a continuous one. The cumulative test score translates the point test results into a continuous function and creates a correlation between the scores. The results of an experiment with the participation of RTU MIREA students are presented. The experimental results are analyzed. The possibility of using the method in educational processes is shown. The method is an alternative to the Rush method.