LFU:online

After successfully completing the course, students will have mastered concepts such as knowledge domains and knowledge structures, in which different states of knowledge are hierarchically organized in a pedagogically meaningful way. They will be able to organize knowledge in a meaningful way according to skills and misconceptions and are able to adaptively diagnose knowledge states. They will be able to structure knowledge in knowledge bases and use this as a basis for developing small learning applications.

The psychology of knowledge deals with knowledge representation and knowledge acquisition, the retrieval of knowledge, and its application in everyday activities. An essential feature is the symbolic, qualitative representation of knowledge content. It is therefore insufficient, for example, to say that someone knows five things from a particular domain—just as it is questionable to say that someone has three symptoms of depression. In this course, we will cover the history of knowledge psychology and take a closer look at knowledge space theory (KST, Doignon & Falmagne, 1985), which formalizes basic concepts such as knowledge domains, structures, and states. Based on this theory, we develop efficient methods for knowledge diagnostics, with a special focus on systems of abilities, misconceptions, and processes of learning and forgetting.

Course with continuous assessment (VL) with short lectures, exercises to be completed, and small group projects including presentations, followed by a final exam.

Compulsory attendance and participation (exercises, presentations), one exam at the end

Cosyn, Eric & Uzun, Hasan & Doble, Christopher & Matayoshi, Jeffrey. (2021). A practical perspective on knowledge space theory: ALEKS and its data. 10.13140/RG.2.2.20082.53448.

Doignon, J.P., Falmagne, J.C., 1985. Spaces for the assessment of knowledge. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 23, 175–196.

Falmagne, J.C., Doignon, J.P., 2011. Learning Spaces. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg.

Fang, Y., Ren, Z., Hu, X., Graesser, A., 2019. A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of ALEKS on learning. Educational Psychology 39, 1278–1292.

Further project-specific readings