Assessment of Students' General Cognitive Ability with Computer-Based Complex Problem Simulations - COGSIM
Coordinating Institution:
Université du Luxembourg
Contracting Partner(s):
CRP Henri Tudor
Other Partner(s):
University of Heidelberg (D)
From: 01/04/2009
To: 31/03/2012
Budget: 527,000.00€
Contact(s):
Brunner Martin
Summary
General cognitive ability (“Intelligence”) is among the most important and useful psychological constructs capable of predicting health and longevity, academic success, as well as success on the job. Crucially, intelligence as assessed in typical intelligence tests represents a general cognitive resource that substantively aids to successful problem solving across content domains. However, one major short-coming of typical intelligence measures is that these instruments lack face validity for their predictive capabilities. Further, intelligence tests use static problem formats with a relatively limited amount of complexity and generally do not provide information on test takers’ problem representations. The present project aims to overcome these severe limitations of typical intelligence tests by using complex problem solving scenarios as an alternative assessment instrument of students’ general cognitive ability.
Within a computer-based environment living systems (e.g., cells, organisms, or teams) with a varying degree of problem complexity will be simulated. Problem complexity may be increased by (a) the number of variables that can be manipulated (e.g., the number of elements within a cell) and (b) by the number and quality of relations among the variables within the scenario. Two performance scores will be obtained: (a) students have to manipulate the variables of the problem scenario to achieve certain goal states. (b) The quality of students’ understanding of the problem situations will be assessed by means of causal diagrams which students use to represent their thinking on the relations among the scenario’s variables.
Our major achievement in 2009 was to conceptualize and develop the computer-based environment to simulate complex problem solving scenarios. Further, during the last year we have thoroughly reviewed the literature on complex problem solving and its relationship to general cognitive ability. The results of this theoretical analysis will be synthesized in a review paper in February 2010. We are looking forward to the empirical validation of our new assessment instrument. Data will be obtained at the end of 2010 from a total of about 600 students who attend the grade levels 9, 11, and 13.
These are the grade levels at which many students make their transition from school to the workplace and therefore making an assessment of students’ general cognitive ability particularly relevant. All students will also take a typical intelligence test in order to assess the degree of overlap between the classic approach of intelligence testing and our novel computer-based problem solving instrument.
Project Website:
Figure: COGSIM causal diagram