Recently, two educational evaluation technology practical research papers published by the Silicon Valley R&D Department of TAL were accepted by the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) annual meeting. Researchers were invited to attend the 2020 NCME conference in September and conduct theme discussions.

The two academic papers were selected for the international top conference in the field of educational measurement, reflecting the international academic community's recognition of TAL's academic research and practical applications in the field of educational measurement and cognitive assessment.

Selected for International Top Conference on Cognitive Science, Achieving Academic Recognition

The National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) is a national association of educational assessment professionals in the United States. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, which it helped to develop, is one of the most authoritative sets of standards for educational and psychological testing in the world, and has had a profound influence on the development of assessment standards in the education sector. Large international assessment companies such as ETS (which administers well-known tests such as the SAT, AP, TOEFL, TOEIC, and GRE) and ACT (which administers the ACT college admissions test, a competitor to the SAT) both reference these standards when designing and developing their assessment products. The NCME annual conference, as a leading international event in the field of educational measurement, attracts experts, scholars, and researchers from around the world every year.

The theme of this year's NCME conference is "Making Measurement Matter," which emphasizes the important value of educational measurement and testing in education and teaching, as well as in today's society. Both of the papers submitted by TAL's Silicon Valley R&D department that were accepted are based on the large-scale application of TAL's self-developed assessment technology in specific teaching scenarios.

The titles of the two papers are "Successes and Challenges of Implementing Individualized Practices in an Online One-on-One Mathematics Tutoring Context" and "Tackling the Measurement Specialist Shortage: Empowering Educational Practitioners with Operational Measurement Methodologies" respectively. By exploring and practicing measurement techniques and methods in TAL's actual teaching scenarios, the researchers have laid the foundation for precise educational measurement and precise teaching stratification, providing a theoretical basis for exploring personalized teaching. The first paper, based on the collaboration between the Silicon Valley R&D department and Xueersi Online School's one-on-one cognitive assessment project, demonstrates the application of personalized practice in online one-on-one scenarios.

Based on the performance of students in cognitive diagnostic assessments of mathematics subjects, personalized exercises are provided during classes. Research has shown that students who use personalized exercises make greater learning progress than those who use general exercises. This finding also provides empirical support for the implementation of assessment techniques in the Chinese education industry and the use of cognitive assessment results to feed back into personalized teaching.

In the second paper, focusing on the implementation of performance level descriptors (PLDs) and corresponding evaluation criteria for different class types, the Silicon Valley R&D department and Xueersi front-line teachers cooperated to practice the methodology of assessment and evaluation in specific business scenarios using different forms.

The study found that front-line teachers who have been trained by metrologists can also serve as trainers, successfully providing measurement training for other teaching and research personnel, helping them understand relevant knowledge of PLD, completing the specified operational steps of PLD. This way effectively improves the assessment literacy of front-line teachers, and thus achieves accurate teaching stratification.

The acceptance of two papers on educational assessment technology practice by international top conferences not only reflects the recognition of the international academic community of TAL's emphasis and investment in education source innovation, but also confirms the practical value of educational assessment technology in promoting individualized teaching.

Exploring the Science of Learning to Enhance Scientific Teaching

In recent years, TAL has actively explored technological and educational innovation, deeply integrating cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, brain and cognitive science with educational scenarios, realizing the intelligentization and personalization of education, helping to achieve "large-scale individualized teaching", and striving to ensure that every child has access to fair and quality education.As the first overseas R&D team of TAL, the Silicon Valley R&D department brings together global technological and talent advantages, and is committed to scientifically quantifying students' learning performance. By deeply analyzing different types of learning situation data, and integrating innovations in the fields of cognitive science, educational psychology, metrology, and multi-modal big data technology, it provides driving force for scientific teaching and learning.

Relying on TAL's rich teaching scenarios and data resources, the Silicon Valley R&D department has developed a set of cognitive literacy assessment systems suitable for Chinese conditions for K12 students based on the internationally mature cognitive science framework and paradigm, combined with the compulsory education curriculum standards and relevant examination outlines.

At present, the evaluation system has been successfully applied to the front-line teaching scenarios of many education brands under TAL, such as Xueersi, Xueersi Online School, Xueersi Aizhikang, and Content Development. It continuously promotes the further development of precise evaluation tools in practice and continues to produce data solutions, making the teaching effects visible.

At the 2019 Global Education Summit (GES), the Silicon Valley R&D Department publicly presented for the first time the cooperation and research results after 9 months of collaboration with Xueersi · Aizhikang - the Xueersi evaluation system.

This system integrates the research and development capabilities of the professional scientist team of the Silicon Valley R&D Department and the years of teaching experience of the teaching and research team of Aizhikang. Through technology, it realizes precise assessment, enabling front-line teachers to deeply understand students' learning situations, and helps formulate personalized learning plans based on students' ability profiles, truly achieving teaching according to students' abilities.

In addition, the PAC discipline cognitive literacy framework is also a major research achievement of the Silicon Valley R&D Department.

This framework visualizes the mastery of key knowledge points during the learning process by integrating the form of tool-based products through the PaaS platform, assessment tools such as IRT, and relevant theoretical foundations and knowledge graph technologies. Furthermore, it conducts in-depth analysis of educational teaching methods and evaluation methods that are suitable for students' brain development and cognitive laws, aiming to improve teaching quality and efficiency and facilitate the practical implementation of personalized teaching.

Adhering to the mission of "Love and Technology Make Education Better", TAL Silicon Valley R&D department will continue to work with global education and technology elites. Through technological practices, it will better empower the entire process of education and teaching, strive to upgrade the evaluation of educational services from "perceived effectiveness" to "real effectiveness", promote the development of personalized teaching from the source, and explore more possibilities for large-scale personalized instruction.