What is Adaptive Evaluation?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Learning and assessment based on the student’s abilities go hand in hand with improving the educational experience.

What is Adaptive Evaluation?
Picture: Istock/Aleksei Naumov
Reading time 2 minutes
Reading Time: 2 minutes

This assessment method adjusts to the student’s abilities.

The conditions imposed by the pandemic have forced the educational system to generate or adopt new online education and evaluation solutions. This is the problem that we discuss in our next webinar. On April 27 at 4:00 PM (Central Mexico), we will have with us Julieta Noguez Monroy, a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence from Tecnologico de Monterrey. Under the title Adaptive Evaluation Environments based on Student Profiles, Dr. Noguez Monroy will tell us about the purpose of adaptive evaluation as a global trend and its value as an educational resource that is becoming progressively virtual.

To learn more about this method of knowledge validation, we must understand: What is adaptive assessment?

Tailor-made learning and assessment

Adaptive learning is a methodology that considers and measures critical factors of the educational process, such as learning style, level of understanding, feedback, communication skills, and other data that comprise the profile of the student’s specific needs.

This information supports creating a personalized methodology that offers multiple possibilities for great success. The approach emerged in the ’70s, but it was impossible to apply it on a large scale until developing better computing equipment, advanced artificial intelligence techniques, and improved online virtual environments.

Measuring progress is crucial for applying adaptive learning; therefore, evaluation has become one of the main tools to assess it. The computerized adaptive evaluation we know today is based on the model devised by Alfred Binet. The assessment tools are comprised of elements selected to correspond to the estimated capacity of the student. If the pupil responds correctly to a particular element, the next one will be a little more difficult, or if they do not answer correctly, the following one will be easier. In this way, the test adjusts to the student’s aptitude and enables learning at their pace.

Benefits of adaptive evaluation

The benefits of adaptive testing have been maximized by the flexibility and scope of technology and online educational modeling. This method’s advantages to validate learning include improvements in educational experience and student performance and real-time, personalized feedback. It enables one-on-one mentoring, increases student motivation, and decreases dropout rates.

Have you applied adaptive learning or testing in your classrooms? Have you learned under this model? What results have you achieved? Tell us in the comments. If you want to know more about adaptive learning and assessment, do not miss the next webinar, April 27 at 4:00 PM (Central Mexico). It will be in Spanish only. We also invite you to download the report Edu Trends: Adaptive Learning and Evaluation, available in Spanish and English.

Translation by Daniel Wetta.

Sofía García-Bullé

This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0