PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF AN ITEM BANK TO MEASURE KNOWLEDGE IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

FRANCO DANIEL CORTEZ; ÓSCAR M. LOZANO ROJAS; CUPANI, MARCOS

Seville (Spain). 16th - 18th of November, 2017.

Congreso; 10th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation; 2017

Educational measurement is regarded as empirical, quantitative and, on a large scale, as having the main purpose of controlling educational systems (Long, Wendt, & Dunne, 2011). These evaluation systems can give the institutions the opportunity to measure their own progress year after year in compliance with the standards set by government agencies (Garbanzo Vargas, 2007) and can also assess the quality of educators´ training (Popham, 2001). In addition, these evaluation systems are used for university admission, certification, monitoring, and diagnosis of student?s learning (Eggen, 2011). In other words, the evaluation of academic performance is a very important issue for parents, teachers, and the Government (Novak, Mintzes, & Wandersee, 2000). An exact measurement plays a very important role in the evaluation of academic success and, therefore, the development of analytical methods has advanced greatly in recent years (Törmäkangas, 2011). In Argentina there are no standardized instruments to assess academic performance of university students. The aim of this article was to develop an Item Bank for General Knowledge Test composed of twenty specific knowledge domains. Considering that an effective test construction requires organization and systematization of activities, progress in five domains is presented. The sample was composed of 4,428 university students. The items were organized in different forms and into separate subtests, with some common items across subtests. Evaluation of Rasch model fit (infit < 2.0), differential item functioning, dimensionality, local independence, item, and person separation (>2.0), and reliability (>.80) resulted in a bank of items with good psychometric properties. The bank provides items with a wide range of content coverage and may serve as a sound basis for computerized adaptive testing applications. Among the benefits offered by this Bank of Items is the adequacy of the curriculum to the requirements and needs of students (Fuentes Navarro, 2004). That is to say, teaching would be favored if the contents and the difficulty of the instruction are in accordance with the subject´s knowledge and skills, optimizing the teaching process (Rolfhus & Ackerman, 1999). Likewise, this evaluation would enable the evaluation of the quality of educators´ instruction (Popham, 2001). Finally, evaluation may also be based on criteria for quality control and effectiveness of the educational policies adopted (Martínez Rizo, 2009). In this way, to have a correctly elaborated measurement tool would represent an advance in the evaluation of the learning of the educational systems (Arias, 2006). The contribution of this work is significant in the field of educational assessment in Argentina