UTILIZATION OF PROCESS DATA IN CHINA: EXPLORING STUDENTS’ PROBLEM-SOLVING STRATEGIES IN COMPUTER-BASED SCIENCE ASSESSMENT FEATURING INTERACTIVE TASKS

Students’ problem-solving strategies and the differences among strategy groups were explored by analyzing the process data collected during student interactions with computer-based science items. Data were gathered from 1516 eleventh-grade students from 4 schools in China. Analyses of the sequences of students’ response actions revealed that the students were divided into four strategy groups when designing experiments to solve scientific problems: the scientific and rigorous strategy (18.5%), scientific and less rigorous strategy (25.4%), incomplete strategy (31.5%), and chaotic strategy (24.6%). The heatmaps of response actions for each strategy and the frequencies of the most representative response sequences were further explored to understand the students’ detailed trajectories. The results showed that successful problem solvers were generally inclined to explore all possibilities of experimental combinations and design experiments scientifically and rigorously based on the relevant scientific principles. Moreover, the timestamps of response actions were explored to show that the students who adopted the scientific and rigorous strategy spent more time seeking solutions, suggesting that students may need sufficient time to solve complex and authentic scientific problems. The findings enrich the literature on using process data to address theoretical issues in educational assessment and provide students with individualized instructional needs for teachers to improve students’ scientific problem-solving competency.