(An older post, here only because of contextual relevance)

The basic pedagogical process can be defined as a systematic transfer of knowledge and - or skills from an instructor to a learner. Depending upon the basic objectives of the process, the transfer may be limited to cognition of facts or may be extended to application and extension of facts, their inter-linkages and derivative concepts.

Since the important players in this interaction are the instructor and the learner, the important determinants of the effectiveness of the process should include the instructor centric parameters, the learner centric parameters and the transaction centric parameters.

Instructor Centric Parameters

Instructor centric parameters revolve around the instructor’s ability to effectively transfer the skills / knowledge and ignite the curiosity and motivation of the learner to explore the area through active thinking and alternative knowledge sources.

• Level of the target knowledge / skill with the instructor
• Level of transaction skill of the instructor
• Ability to engage
• Ability to motivate
• Ability to transfer the knowledge / skill
• Ability to activate the curiosity of the learner
• Ability to answer related questions
• Ability to positively handle unrelated queriesMotivation level of the instructor

The level of target knowledge is to a great extent determined by academic achievements of the instructor. To ensure adequate target knowledge, it is important to not only go by the academic qualifications possessed by the instructor but also testing his actual level of knowledge through independent testing.

Transaction skills of the instructor depend upon the awareness of the learning process possessed by the instructor and his aptitude for teaching. A University degree in education provides adequate understanding of the learning process to the instructor. However, it is important to actually test the teaching aptitude of the instructor.

Motivation level of the instructor determines his level of proactive effort in ensuring effective learning. This depends upon the career goals of the instructor, his basic personality and behavioral traits. It is important to ensure that a sound synchrony exists between career objectives and opportunity and progression, the teaching profession provides.

Learner Centric Parameters

Learner centric factors determine the learner’s ability to grasp the target knowledge set in isolation as well as in the context of related concepts. This includes:

• Level of the pre-requisite knowledge and skills
• Level of inherent aptitude for the specific knowledge set
• Level of inquisitiveness
• Ability to process, analyze and link new information with what already possessed

Together, these factors determine the learning speed.

Actually, the India bit is a tad unnecessary. Test prep for a global test like GMAT has to be the same, Timbuktoo or Tinsukia.

Coming back to the question, what’s the best way to prepare yourself for the desired high score (cliched, I know - no one wants a low score !!!) in GMAT. For that matter, what is the best way to teach yourself anything new be it horse riding, bodybuilding, a new language or even how to write a blog. Simple, go to someone who is an expert and ask him to be your guiding angel for a while.  Imagine learning bicep-building from Arnold or business building from Bill Gates or Larry Page or Richard Branson, imagine learning basketball from Michael Jordan or acting from Al Pacino.

Yes, it’s not going to happen, not at least to the mere mortals unless you happen to be born into one of these families and, then by some strange coincidence, you too take a liking to the same field of endeavor.

Let’s now come back to the relatively less ambitious task of scoring a perfect 800 in GMAT. The best bet would be to catch hold of a guy who is an expert; pray, cajole or somehow convince him to be your guiding angel (try, for instance, making him an offer he can’t refuse !!!) and then follow exactly as he says.

The idea is to seek guidance from an expert who also has the time and inclination to help you understand your own unique combination of skills and attitudes which make you pre-disposed towards a certain score and helps you work on those improvement areas, again unique to you, which can result in the maximum improvement in the score with minimum time and effort investments.

As long as the Perfect Test Prep engine (as discussed in the previous posts) does not attain a high level of maturity, plain old guru-disciple model is the best bet.

Yes, find yourself a personal guru.

If you cannot, do something that approximates the classical guru-disciple dynamics as closely as possible.

Let’s do a quick recap - map out the skills/knowledge attributes tested in the ACT/SAT, determine what proficiency levels lead to what scores, determine what interventions are most effective for a given skill gap in a given attribute, determine the student’s target score, determine his current proficiency levels in all the attributes, determine target proficiency levels (derived from target scores), determine the skill gap and finally determine the required interventions.

A caveat, however, is that this process will not be completely analytical and mathematically deterministic. A lot of “understanding” of the the student’s learning style, goals and objectives and personality will come in play and hence the role of “academic thinking” cannot be neglected in the favor of pure analysis.

After the intervention steps are determined and the delivery of the same starts, it is very important to periodically gauge the effectiveness of each of them and the actual improvement that is happening. The findings will help in mid way course correction, if required, as well as help in making the complete mapping process more robust. In a sense, this engine will be a dynamic set of activities which will “learn” from itself as it is applied to more and more students.

Thus, the perfect test prep engine has to be a dynamic combination of cold analysis, warm understanding and an ability of the engine itself to imbibe learnings from its experiences and make itself stronger in terms of determining the right set of interventions which will lead to the desired score improvement with minimum expenditure in terms of time, money and teacher/student effort.

This engine is, as of today, a theoretical concept - but it is doable. the benefits are so immense it justifies investment in such an idea. It is powerful as it combines the best in analytics with the human side of teaching and makes the system self-improving.

Concluded.

Next comes the question of interventions.

Generic interventions in the form of standard text books lose their relevance as soon as we talk of student level customization. Also, the nature of intervention whether it is instruction or instructor led practice or focussed on test taking skills, whether hard or soft becomes important for obvious reasons. The key is finding a) the right mix of types of intervention, and, b) determining what those interventions are.

Preparation deficiencies amongst the students can be clubbed in the following categories:

• Knowledge deficiency - This could include one or more of lack of understanding of concepts, lack of pre-requisite knowledge, improper understanding of interlinkages between concepts, lack of understanding of application
• Skill deficiency - This could include inadequate reading and comprehension skills, lack of analytical ability, lack of critical reasoning skills, lack of data cognition and understanding skills, lack of composition skills etc.

In an ideal scenario, we should map out all the atomic level skills and knowledge areas relevant to the test and measure the student’s score in all of them. Also, the required skill and knowledge level (corresponding to the target score) being known, the picture will be much clearer in terms of skill gap. Skill gap score for each attribute will dictate the specific type of intervention and the activities to be included in it.

Ideally, determining the intervention will not be the third step in developing such an engine, though it comes sequentially as the third step. Mapping the intervention to the skill gap will in-fact proceed soon after the required attribute map is done.

For each knowledge or skill attribute, experts will need to determine what nature of interventions and what intervention activities should be used for every level of skill gap. That’s important because a skill gap of 4 on an attribute might warrant a completely different intervention vis-a-vis a skill gap of 14 on the same attribute.

Thus, during the development phase itself, we need to have a menu of interventions corresponding to each possible skill gap score on all the attributes. What specific intervention gets chosen from those in the menu will also depend upon the behavioral map of the student.

Once such a mapping of intervention activities with the skill gap scores is known, the task is a simple selection of relevant intervention activities.

This brings us to the third most important pillar of the perfect test program viz feedback and mid-way course correction.

(Continued in part 4)

The first part of the post laid out some of the skills/knowledge areas the standardized tests seek to test the student on.

Also, a logical base was built for the argument that the target perfect score for every student would vary.

The Perfect Test Prep thus starts with a unique perfect target score for a student.

The next target for the PTP has to be to determine where the student stands at the start of the program. For this, a smart assessment has to be devised which essentially goes about this skill-gap assessment in two steps: Step 1 is to map various knowledge/skill/attitude attributes tested in the SAT and ACT to the corresponding scores. This task becomes inherently complicated because:

a) Construction of a mutually exclusive but collectively exhaustive list of attributes tested in standardized tests is a non trivial job - more so because it is difficult to agree upon an exhaustive list of attributes tested and because these attributes are frequently interlinked with each other. Another point to remember is that it may not always be possible to divide the set of attributes in mutually exclusive categories, in such cases, it is important to at least clearly mark out the interlinkages.

b) The second part of this task is to map the attributes to the scores they fetch. This is complex because different combinations of attributes could bring the same score and it is important to determine the difference, a change in each attribute would cause in the scores obtained, keeping all else constant (more like partial differentiation)

Step 2 is more standardized, once attributes are marked out, methods can be determined to assess the candidates level of proficiency on each of those.

The skill assessment (Step 2 above) will also reveal the pattern of attribute configuration (i.e. whether the student is naturally inclined to do well in math or english). Next, keeping the attribute configuration same, one can arrive at the required proficiency level in each of the attributes corresponding to the student’s attribute map (Thus, Jack and Jill, with Jack more mathematical and Jill, more “English types” gunning for the same score will arrive at different target proficiency levels on each attributes corresponding to their respective attribute configuration).

Once skill gaps are mapped, the subsequent task is to determine the set of interventions which would enhance the attribute proficiency scores to the desired levels.

Continued in part 3.