An article recently published in Frontiers in Psychology reported how technology is used to facilitate personalized learning in China. Xiaofeng You and colleagues examined the Chinese Learning Diagnosis System (CLDS) developed by a Chinese educational evaluation company designed for providing timely feedback to students and teachers.
The CLDS analyzes students’ assignments for their mastery of various attributes and generates feedback to students and teachers. Consequently, students can identify their strengths and weakness and teachers can modify their instruction using the information. To examine the CLDS’s effectiveness, the achievements, self-efficacy, and academic motivation of 547 high school students enrolled in an experimental school in 2012 were compared to 396 high school students in a school where CLDS was not used. Achievement in the pretest was measured by high school entrance examination scores, and achievement in the posttest 3 years later was measured by the college entrance examination scores; both are high stakes tests in China. The results indicated that:
- While the pretest scores of the experimental school students and the control school students did not show a significant difference, the experimental school students obtained higher scores than the control school students in the posttest (ES= +0.31 for humanities students; ES= +0.66 for science students)
- Self-efficacy of students in the experimental school significantly increased (ES= +0.38), while no significant changes were found in students in the control school.
- Academic motivation was found increased among both students in the experimental school (ES= +0.33) and the control school (ES= +0.31).
Teachers in the experimental school reported that the time taken for unit tests was also reduced, enabling them to provide detailed instructions to individual students who made mistakes in the tests.
Source (Open Access): You, X., Li, M., & Liu, H. (2019). The Feedback of the Chinese Learning Diagnosis System for Personalized Learning in Classrooms. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1751.