IRT in 5 Minutes: Easy Ways to Better Understand an Assessment (Abstract Only)

ABSTRACT

This lightning talk will give a very quick introduction to "Item Response Theory", or IRT. IRT evolved from psychometrics as one method for evaluating the Quality of survey questions. In the classroom, IRT is a fantastic way to gain better insights into the quality and efficacy of the assessments we offer. IRT has been used by testing companies to evaluate exams like the GRE, SAT, and AP, but the same ideas can be applied to our classrooms. By applying some ideas from IRT we can start to look at exam scores with just a few simple charts, and we can begin to assess whether assigned questions are effective. We'll start by looking at correlations between individual question scores and overall assessment scores. While this is a simplification of IRT, we'll look at how we can use it to diagnose potential exam errors. The goal is to better understand the exams we give our students, and we can use this as a jumping off point to continue to evaluate our assessments.

Index Terms

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Computing education

      • Student assessment