Online and other ICT-based Assessment Tools for Problem-solving Skills

Abstract

Problem-solving skills assessment starts with the imperative that the hypothesized construct of skills, is theoretically sound. Secondly, assessment refers to identifying and recording inductive and deductive types of reasoning as well as divergent and convergent thinking skills. The aforementioned procedures should be measured, independent of specific learning domains or knowledge backgrounds. Future research should be oriented towards the development of a prototype set of tasks that would embed problem-solving skills in different content and context areas and that would act as a model for implementation in online large-scale assessments. Furthermore, the classroom provides an environment amenable to collaborative problem solving, in which capturing the progress of students’ both social and cognitive processes through identifying the exchange of implicit and explicit types of information, remains to be sufficiently addressed. Effective collaborative problem-solving assessment is related to well-defined, real-world problems as well as to the provision of respective scaffolds to group members for developing their cognitive and meta-cognitive skills. In other words, effective collaborative problem-solving assessment should bring about and measure group members’ cognitive and meta-cognitive skills, evolving from the social regulation of processes, such as goal setting, connecting information and patterns as well as testing hypotheses.