Evaluating students' problem solving ability on the earthquake related topics through Web-based testing

Abstract

Tenth-grade students' (n = 75) problem-solving ability was evaluated through a Web-based test in a secondary school of Taiwan. This research was based on a previous empirical model (Chang, 2004), which proposes to assess three essential components, i.e. domain knowledge, reasoning skills, and test attitudes to map students' problem-solving ability. The results indicated that significantly positive correlations existed between students' problem-solving ability and the aforementioned components. Quantitative data analysis also suggested that the correlation coefficients among the above components were not high, signifying that these components might have effectively characterized different mechanism of students' problem-solving ability. Implications as a result of the study for the future design of web-based testing were further discussed.