Instructional management system

• US 6,322,366 B1
• Filed: 06/23/1999
• Issued: 11/27/2001
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/1998
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Assessment Technology, Inc. (Imagine Learning LLC (Arizona))
• Original Assignee: Assessment Technology, Inc. (Imagine Learning LLC (Arizona))
• Inventors: Bergan, John Robert, Cole, Kerrie L., Bergan, John Richard
• Primary Examiner(s): Cheng, Joe H.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Harris, Chanda
• Application Number:
  US09/338,440
• Time in Patent Office: 888 Days
• Field of Search: 434/322, 434/323, 434/350, 434/118
• US Class Current: 434/118
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 19/00 Teaching not covered by other main groups of this subclass teaching or practice apparatus for gun-aiming or gun-laying F41G3/26
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 7/02 of the type wherein the student is expected to construct an answer to the question which is presented or wherein the machine gives an answer to the question presented by a student

Abstract

An education management system designed primarily for preschool and beginning elementary grade levels employs learning capabilities which have assigned difficulty and discrimination factors. The learning capabilities for each developmental or grade level are classified into developmental areas which are further broken down into knowledge areas. Those learning capabilities which are indicated as learned for each child are used to assess child educational development, child developmental scores and to indicate readiness level for learning higher difficulty learning capabilities. In the absence of direct observation, work sample, or parent information regarding achievement of individual learning capabilities, an estimation of general overall capability can be used to compute indications of learned capabilities in each developmental area. The system additionally includes lesson plan tools having activities with specific goals or learning capabilities along with indications of class readiness and/or achievement for the specific goals.

Claims

1. An instructional management system for use in a computer having user input, a display and data storage;

the system comprising;

a database for being stored in said data storage and including a list of learning capabilities with associated corresponding varying difficulty factors and a file for setting up a list of students with associated corresponding ability scores; and

a computer program for computing a probability of a student in the list of students performing each of the learning capabilities on the list based upon the corresponding difficulty factor and the corresponding ability score of the student, and for determining a present learning suitability of the student for each of the learning capabilities based upon said computed probabilities.

2. An instructional management system according to claim 1 wherein said computer program classifies present learning suitabilities into suitability to begin learning now and suitability to begin learning later.

3. An instructional management system according to claim 2 wherein said computer program also classifies present learning suitabilities into suitability to begin learning soon.

4. An instructional management system according to claim 1 wherein the computer program includes means for a teacher entering an estimate of a student'"'"'s ability score by the computer input, and computes the probability of performance of the learning capabilities based upon the estimate of the student'"'"'s ability score.

5. An instructional management system according to claim 2 wherein the database includes a plurality of learning activities, and each learning capability is linked to one or more learning activities in the data storage for enabling a teacher to select a learning activity.

6. An instructional management system as claimed in claim 5 wherein the computer program includes a procedure for displaying for a plurality of the learning capabilities within a selected developmental area and for displaying numbers of students of a selected class having each suitability status for each corresponding learning capability.

7. An instructional management system according to claim 1 wherein the database also includes varying discrimination factors associated with the corresponding learning capabilities, and the computer program computes the probability of a student in the list of students performing each of the learning capabilities on the list based upon the corresponding difficulty factor, the corresponding discrimination factor and the corresponding ability score of the student.

8. An instructional management system according to claim 1 wherein the computer program computes the probability P_i of performance of each learning capability i by the equation ${}^{}$

Pi=1

θ

=11+

-ai

(θ

-bi)

wherein e is the natural or Naperian logarithm base, a_i is a discrimination factor of the learning capability i, b_i is the difficulty factor of the learning capability i and θ

is the ability score of the student.

9. An instructional management system according to claim 8 wherein the ability score of the student is based upon the number of learning capabilities which have been learned in the list of learning capabilities.

10. An instructional management system according to claim 9 wherein the database includes an indication of a data source of an assessment of each learned capability.

11. An instructional management system according to claim 10 wherein possible data sources include estimate, work sample and direct observation.

12. An instructional management system according to claim 8 wherein the ability score of the student is an item response theory score derived from a table based upon the learning capabilities which have been learned in the list of learning capabilities.

13. An instructional management system according to claim 9 wherein the ability score of the student is an item response theory score derived from a table based upon the number of learning capabilities which have been learned in the list of learning capabilities.

14. An instructional management system for use in a computer having a display, an input and data storage;

the system comprising;

a database for being stored in said data storage including a plurality of learning capabilities with associated corresponding varying difficulty factors; and

a computer program for receiving from the input an estimate of general ability of a student to accomplish the list of learning capabilities, and for computing a learned indication for each of the learning capabilities based upon the difficulty factors and the estimate of general ability.

15. An instructional management system according to claim 14 wherein the computer program converts the entered estimate of general ability into an item response theory score derived from a table based upon the estimate of general ability, computes a probability of performance by the student for each of the learning capabilities in the list based upon the corresponding difficulty factors and the item response theory score, and assigns a learned indication to each learning capability having a computed probability greater than a predetermined probability.

16. An instructional management system according to claim 15 wherein the computer program computes the probability P_i of performance of each learning capability i by the equation ${}^{}$

Pi=1

θ

=11+

-ai

(θ

-bi)

wherein e is the natural or Naperian logarithm base, a_i is a discrimination factor of the learning capability i, b_i is the difficulty factor of the learning capability i and θ

is the item response theory score of the student.

17. An instructional management system according to claim 16 wherein the computer program assigns the learned indication to each learning capability having a probability P of performance greater than 0.5.

18. An instructional management system according to claim 17 wherein the computer program indicates each learning capability having its probability P of performance in the range from 0.25 to 0.5 as being suitable for being learned now, indicates each learning capability having its probability P of performance in the range from 0.15 to 0.25 as being suitable for being learned soon, and indicates each learning capability having its probability P of performance less than 0.15 as being suitable for being learned later.

19. An instructional management system according to claim 14 wherein the computed learned indications are stored in the data storage and the computer program has a further input for enabling manually changing the computed learned indication of each learning capability based upon actual observed performance.

20. An instructional management system according to claim 14 wherein the database includes a plurality of learning activities, and each learning capability is linked to one or more learning activities in the data storage for enabling a teacher to select a learning activity.

21. An instructional management system for use in a computer having a display, an input and data storage;

the system comprising;

a database for being stored in said data storage including a file for storing indications of suitabilities of a student in a plurality of learning capabilities; and

a computer program for receiving from the input indications of suitabilities of the student to update the file and for further receiving anecdotal notes input by a teacher and storing such anecdotal notes in said database as records associated with said stored indications of suitabilities for the student.

22. An instructional management system as claimed in claim 21 wherein the computer program generates a suggested anecdotal note in response to input of an updated suitability and which can be manually accepted, modified and/or supplemented for being stored in said database.

23. An instructional management system for use in a computer having a display, an input and data storage;

the system comprising;

a database for being stored in said data storage including a plurality of learning capabilities, a file for setting up a list of successive time periods, and a file for storing a plurality of records of student accomplishment of the learning capabilities along with an indication of one of the time periods; and

a computer program for computing an indication of progress of student accomplishments over the plurality of successive time periods.

24. An instructional management system for use in a computer having a display, an input and data storage;

the system comprising;

a database for being stored in said data storage including a plurality of learning capabilities, a file for setting up a list of successive time periods, and a file for storing a plurality of records of student accomplishment of the learning capabilities along with an indication of one of the time periods;

a computer program for computing an indication of progress of student accomplishments over the plurality of successive time periods;

each of the records of student accomplishment including a class to which each student is assigned, and

the computed indication of student accomplishments including an indication of progress of the class as a whole in accomplishment in the different time periods.

25. An instructional management system as claimed in claim 24 wherein each of the plurality of learning capabilities is assigned a difficulty factor and the indication of progress is based upon difficulty factors of the learning capabilities.

26. An instructional management system for use in a computer having a display, an input and data storage;

the system comprising;

a database for being stored in said data storage including records of students each including a first field designating a class selected from a plurality of classes and a second field designating a suitability status for each of a plurality of learning capabilities; and

a computer program for operating the computer and for displaying for a plurality of the learning capabilities within a selected developmental area and for displaying numbers of students of a selected class having each suitability status for each corresponding learning capability.

27. An instructional management system according to claim 26 wherein computer program includes means for manually assembling a lesson plan based upon selected learning capabilities selected from the displayed plurality of learning capabilities.

28. An instructional management system according to claim 27 wherein said computer program classifies present learning suitabilities into suitability to begin learning now and suitability to begin learning later.

29. An instructional management system for use in a computer having a display, an input and data storage;

the system comprising;

a database for being stored in said data storage including a listing of a plurality of goals to be achieved by students,

a computer program for indicating and storing indications of achievement of each goal in the plurality of goals by each student in said database, and

means for computing a developmental score based upon the number of achieved goals of the plurality of goals for each student.

30. An instructional management system according to claim 29 wherein

the database includes instructional activities each assigned with one or more of said plurality of goals, and each of the plurality of goals is assigned a difficulty factor; and

the computer program includes a procedure for assigning readiness levels to each goal for each student based upon the number of achieved goals of each student and the difficulty factor of each goal, and a procedure responsive to selection of a goal for displaying activities assigned with the selected goal to enable achievement based instruction.

31. An instructional management system according to claim 29 wherein the computer program includes a procedure for indicating and storing a data source for each stored indication of achievement.

32. An instructional management system according to claim 31 wherein possible data sources include estimate, work sample and direct observation.

33. An instructional management system according to claim 29 wherein

the database includes instructional activities each assigned with one or more of said plurality of goals, and each of the plurality of goals is assigned a difficulty factor;

and

the computer program includes a procedure responsive to selection of a goal for displaying activities assigned with the selected goal to enable achievement based instruction.

34. An instructional management system according to claim 29 wherein the developmental score is further based upon item response theory.