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Quantifiable Learning Outcomes

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The Art of Modelling the Learning Process

Part of the book series: Springer Texts in Education ((SPTE))

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Abstract

Educational researchers and practitioners use many types of quantitative or qualitative outcome variables that differ not only in how they are measured but differ in the score distributions they tend to generate as well. This has implications for the types of models we should use. For example, exam performance, response time (i.e., time from starting to see a question until a response is verbalised), and number of attempts needed to pass an exam are three different types of outcome variables that each call for different models. These and other quantitative variables, some of which are observed once in time some of which are observed at several occasions during a longer time interval, are discussed in this chapter, with appropriate analytic methods. Examples are provided for appropriate and not so appropriate ways of dealing with ‘outliers’ and skewness in the distribution of an outcome variable. For instance, response time may well form a unimodal distribution with a clear skew to the right; the use of suboptimal methods of dealing with that right skew may result in a relation between that time variable and another variable of interest appearing more or less linear while it is actually clearly nonlinear.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hull York Medical School, University of York, York, UK

    Jimmie Leppink

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  1. Jimmie Leppink
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Correspondence to Jimmie Leppink .

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Leppink, J. (2020). Quantifiable Learning Outcomes. In: The Art of Modelling the Learning Process. Springer Texts in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43082-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43082-5_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-43081-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-43082-5

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