Who Makes an Effort? A Person-Centered Examination of Motivation and Beliefs as Predictors of Students’ Effort and Performance on the PISA 2015 Science Assessment

Each time new PISA results are presented, they gain a lot of attention. However, there are many factors that lie behind the results, and they get less attention. In this study, we take a person-centered approach and focus on students’ motivation and beliefs, and how these predict students’ effort and performance on the PISA 2015 assessment of scientific literacy. Moreover, we use both subjective (self-report) and objective (time-based) measures of effort, which allows us to compare these different types of measures. Latent profile analysis was used to group students in profiles based on their instrumental motivation, enjoyment, interest, self-efficacy, and epistemic beliefs (all with regard to science). A solution with four profiles proved to be best. When comparing the effort and performance of these four profiles, we saw several significant differences, but many of these differences disappeared when we added gender and the PISA index of economic, social, and cultural status (ESCS) as control variables. The main difference between the profiles, after adding control variables, was that the students in the profile with most positive motivation and sophisticated epistemic beliefs performed best and put in the most effort. Students in the profile with unsophisticated epistemic beliefs and low intrinsic values (enjoyment and interest) were most likely to be classified as low-effort responders. We conclude that strong motivation and sophisticated epistemic beliefs are important for both the effort students put into the PISA assessment and their performance, but also that ESCS had an unexpectedly large impact on the results.

ASSESSMENT DEVELOPMENT TO MEASURE SCIENCE PROCESS SKILLS ON THE INTERACTION OF LIVING THINGS WITH THEIR ENVIRONMENT IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

This study aims to develop an assessment to measure science process skills on living things interaction and their environment. The research used research and development (R&D) that consist research and initial information collection, planning, initial product format development, small-scale trials, product revisions, initial trials, and final products. The trial subjects were expert subjects (assessment experts, material experts and linguists), and the subjects were students of state junior high school in Bengkulu City as product users. Data were analyzed descriptive qualitatively and quantitatively. Feasibility assessment by three validator experts developed on the assessment aspect of 89%, material aspect of 93%, and language aspect of 93%, overall was declared very feasible with an average of 92%. This showed that the assessment of science process skills to measure science process skills was stated to be very suitable to be used to measure the level of students' science process skills. This assessment was the science assessment, where in the development of the science assessment used formative assessment because this assessment was given to every lesson and can be carried out on sub-subjects or each subject. In the development of this formative assessment, multiple choice tests were developed.

Pengembangan soal penilaian tengah semester 2 mata pelajaran IPA kelas VIII sekolah menengah pertama

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk: (1) mengembangkan soal Penilaian Tengah Semester 2 untuk mengukur ketercapaian kompetensi IPA peserta didik kelas VIII SMP, (2) mengetahui kualitas secara teoretis soal Penilaian Tengah Semester 2 IPA kelas VIII, dan (3) mengetahui kualitas secara empiris soal Penilaian Tengah Semester 2 IPA Kelas VIII menurut teori klasik. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian dan pengembangan yang diadaptasi dengan tujuh langkah dari 10 langkah model penelitian dan pengembangan Borg & Gall yang meliputi: (1) penelitian pendahuluan, (2) perencanaan, (3) pengembangan produk awal, (4) uji coba kelompok kecil, (5) revisi, (6) uji coba lapangan, dan (7) revisi. Penelitian ini telah menghasilkan : (1) soal Penilaian Tengah Semester 2 IPA berupa soal pilihan ganda sederhana dengan empat pilihan jawaban yang terdiri dari 38 butir soal yang dihasilkan melalui prosedur tahap-tahap penelitian dan pengembangan, (2) berdasarkan validasi oleh ahli dan reviewer soal PTS 2 IPA kelas VIII merupakan soal yang valid dengan perbaikan sesuai dengan masukan dari ahli dan reviewer; (3) berdasarkan uji coba empiris kualitas soal Penilaian Tengah Semester 2 menurut teori klasik terdiri dari 38 butir soal yang valid dengan tingkat reliabilitas α = 0,839 yaitu dalam kategori sangat baik. Developing an assessment test in the middle of semester 2 in the VIII science class of junior high school Abstract: This study aims to: (1) develop the Middle Semester 2 assessment questions to measure the achievement of science competencies of class VIII junior high school students, (2) know the theoretical quality of the Middle Semester 2 Science class VIII Middle Assessment questions, and (3) determine the empirical quality of the questions Middle Semester 2 Science Assessment Class VIII according to classical theory. This research is a research and development which is adapted with seven steps from the 10 steps of the Borg & Gall research and development model which includes: (1) preliminary research, (2) planning, (3) initial product development, (4) small group trials, (5) revisions, (6) field trials, and (7) revisions. This research has resulted in: (1) Middle Semester 2 Science Assessment questions in the form of simple multiple-choice questions with four answer choices consisting of 38 items produced through the research and development stages procedure, (2) based on validation by experts and question reviewers PTS 2 IPA class VIII is a valid question with corrections according to input from experts and reviewers; (3) based on an empirical trial of the quality of the Middle Semester 2 assessment items according to classical theory consists of 38 valid items with a reliability level of α = 0.839 which is in the very good category.

A Different Approach on Automated Use Case Diagram Semantic Assessment

The use case diagram is one of the diagrams commonly taught in colleges of computer science. Assessment of use case diagrams is often an obstacle for a teacher in the learning process. It is due to the interpersonal and intrapersonal problems of the teacher in assessing. Interpersonal problems are caused by the absence of an assessment standard among teachers. Intrapersonal problems are caused by the inconsistency of a teacher in assessing many diagrams of student answers. This research aims to create a semantic use case diagram automatic assessment method. Semantic assessment is divided into two kinds, namely property and relationship. All information used is a label translated from the XMI document. Similarity assessment between labels used cosine similarity, employing WuPalmer to perform WordNet searches. The results showed that the proposed method had a substantial agreement with the teacher as an expert; however, a teacher tends to look at property information rather than relationship information to assess use case diagrams.