Procedure for the assessment of cognitive complexity: Development and implementation in the topic "Hydrolysis of salts"

Abstract

The aim of this research was the creation and validation of a procedure for determining the cognitive complexity of problem tasks in the field of salt hydrolysis. The procedure created included an assessment of the difficulty of concepts and an assessment of their interactivity. One of the research tasks was to determine whether there were misconceptions by students that might have influenced their achievement. There were 50 Bachelor of Science in Chemistry students who participated in the study. A knowledge test was used as a research instrument to assess the performance and a seven-point Likert scale to evaluate the invested mental effort. The validity of this instrument for the assessment of cognitive complexity was confirmed by a series of regression analyses, where acceptable and statistically significant correlation coefficients were obtained among the examined variables: student performance and invested mental effort as dependent variables and cognitive complexity as independent variable

Keywords

• Mental effort
• Performance
• Cognitive complexity
• Salt hydrolysis