Skill assessment method: A perspective from concept-cognitive learning

Abstract

Skills represent potential cognitive abilities that need to be reflected by observing external performances. In competence-based knowledge space theory, whether individuals solve items in a knowledge domain correctly can reflect whether they have mastered the relevant skills. Currently, skill function that reflects the relationship between skills and items has been extended to fuzzy skill function on polytomous items. However, existing skill assessment techniques are not suitable to assess response data that are noisy under the fuzzy skill function. Based on the fact that individuals' learning process of skills is consistent with the cognitive learning process, this paper provides a skill assessment method from a concept-cognitive learning perspective. A special fuzzy skill function, conjunctive fuzzy skill function, is converted into a fuzzy formal context. For facilitating skill assessment, the definitions of well-formed item-skill context and subsequent state are given. Based on a well-formed item-skill context and the idea of upper and lower approximations in rough set theory, the approximate concepts are learned by using response patterns as cues to provide a skill assessment method. The empirical application shows that the skill assessment method proposed in this paper is feasible and has practical applications.