Estimating the minimum number of opportunities needed for all students to achieve predicted mastery

Abstract

Abstract We have conducted a study on how many opportunities are necessary, on average, for learners to achieve mastery of a skill, also called a knowledge component (KC), as defined in the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) digital courseware. The study used datasets from 74 different course instances in four topic areas comprising 3813 students and 1.2 million transactions. The analysis supports our claim that the number of opportunities to reach mastery gives us new information on both students and the development of course components. Among the conclusions are a minimum of seven opportunities are necessary for each knowledge component, more if the prior knowledge among students are uneven within a course. The number of KCs in a course increases the number of opportunities needed. The number of opportunities to reach mastery can be used to identify KCs that are outliers that may be in need of better explanations or further instruction.

Keywords

• Knowledge component
• Mastery
• Opportunity
• Digital courseware
• Prediction
• College students