What's Inside the Box? An Open Student Modeling Approach in a Museum Context

Adaptive learning environments and technology-rich assessments capture evidence of students’ skills, knowledge, and other attributes and use it to adapt their interaction or support assessment claims. Data captured to support assessment claims or implement adaptive behavior can include responses to predefined questions and process data. However, students are not always aware of the type of data being captured and how these data are used by these systems. An open student modeling system, implemented as a museum exhibit called “What’s Inside the Box” has been designed to provide students with information about how a technology-rich assessment system makes use of both response and process data to support assessment claims. In this paper we describe the “What’s Inside the Box” system and report on the results of a small-scale study aimed at evaluating system usability and perceived value issues.