Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) is now widely used. However, inserting new items into the question bank of a CAT requires a great effort that makes impractical the wide application of CAT in classroom teaching. One solution would be to use the tacit knowledge of the teachers or experts for a pre-classification and calibrate during the execution of tests with these items. Thus, this research consists of a comparative case study between a Stratified Adaptive Test (SAT), based on the tacit knowledge of a teacher, and a CAT based on Item Response Theory (IRT). The tests were applied in seven Computer Networks courses. The results indicate that levels of anxiety expressed in the use of the SAT were better than those using the CAT, in addition to being simpler to implement. In this way, it is recommended the implementation of a SAT, where the strata are initially based on the tacit knowledge of the teacher and later, as a result of an IRT calibration.
The aim of this work is to adapt and test, in a Brazilian public school, the ACE model proposed by Borkulo for evaluating student performance as a teaching-learning process based on computational modeling systems. The ACE model is based on different types of reasoning involving three dimensions. In addition to adapting the model and introducing innovative methodological procedures and instruments for collecting and analyzing data, our main results showed that the ACE model is superior than written tests for discriminating students on the top and bottom of the scale of scientific reasoning abilities, while both instruments are equivalent for evaluating students in the middle of the scale.
Biology has moved from a bench-based discipline to a bioinformational science in modern times but application of computational and analytical methods of informatics in it is still a problem for many researchers and students of biology. We suggest to integrate cost effective and practical combination of the real and the virtual laboratories into the undergraduate biological science curriculum. This laboratory work illustrates passive and active electrical properties of plant cell membranes while introducing basic principles of electrophysiological recording, data acquisition and analysis. As the object for investigation in this laboratory work large cells of starry stonewort (Nitellopsis obtusa) were used. The simple program for experiment control and express visualization of recorded data was developed. Experiment proposed in this paper is easy implemented with a minimum of laboratory equipment, materials and gives an experience of computerized biological experiment.