PROCEEDINGS OF THE 21ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2018
San Diego, California
Assessing the Development of Students’ Mathematical Competencies: An Information Entropy Approach
Page: 213
We report on the use of a modification of the Danish KOM framework of mathematical competencies for monitoring the development of mathematical competencies of freshmen biology students at a Norwegian university. Preliminary analysis of the data indicated the need for the adjustment of the original framework and development of the appropriate scaling for competencies’ intensity which may differ significantly even within one session. We retain only five out of eight groups of competencies in the KOM framework and suggest the scaling scheme for the strength of each of the sixteen competencies in the five groups. In addition, three different dimensions for each competency are introduced and scaled. After all the data have been processed, the need for the development of techniques for processing large data sets arose. We started by converting a large corpus of qualitative data into quantitative data and used recent developments in the information theory to initiate the discussion regarding monitoring of the development of students’ mathematical competencies.