Employing online S-P diagnostic table for qualitative comments on test results

The major concerns of adaptive testing studies have concentrated on effectiveness and efficiency of the system built for the research experiments. It has been criticised that such general information has fallen short of providing qualitative descriptions regarding learning performance. Takahiro Sato of Japan proposed an analytical diagram called Student-Problem Chart (S-P Chart) in the 1970. The S-P Chart is able to establish a learning diagnostic table which comments student learning performance in a verbal form. The advancement of computer technology has made the S-P analytical process more applicable for school teachers. This study examined how online comments provided by the S-P diagnostic table could affect the students' learning attitude. One hundred sixth grade students were selected to be the subjects of the study. An online embedded test was given to the subjects and an S-P diagnostic table was drawn by the computer to display instant comments on each student's learning performance. A Questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews were performed after the experiment. Results indicated that students liked the online qualitative comments. This is because students were able to instantly understand why they performed well/poor in the test, which is much beyond the numerical scores can explain. The results also showed that the online S-P diagnostic table made students more circumspect on answering the test questions in order to reduce careless mistakes. Students would also be more likely to review what missed on the test. However, the S-P comment table seemed to have no effect on improving their learning performance. An online iterative drilling platform was consequently built to incorporate with the S-P diagnostic process to assist poorly performed students. It may effectively work with the S-P diagnostic process to provide constructive remediation for the students who exhibited a poor performance on the S-P chart.