# Research on the Diagnosis of Students’ Cognitive Level Based on Deep Learning

Authors: Qingyun Hou
Journal: Security and Communication Networks
 (2021)

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## Abstract

In order to improve teaching quality and reduce students’ learning difficulty, this study introduces the concept of Teaching for the Ability (TFA) on the basis of traditional Internet teaching, uses big data to calculate students’ cognitive ability, and uses the evaluation results of students’ cognitive ability to drive the Internet learning scheme tailored for each student one by one. In the data validation analysis, it is found that the cognitive ability evaluation results made by the system directly affect the students’ final performance in the national unified graduation examination, and the education scheme for students with low cognitive ability is found in the data analysis.


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## Body

## 1. Introduction

There is a concept called “Teaching for the Ability (TFA)” in the traditional Chinese view of education, that is, formulating a targeted teaching scheme according to the specific situation of students and repeatedly optimizing the scheme according to the students’ learning feedback [1]. In China’s exam-oriented education system, it is necessary to adjust students’ homework design and teaching progress according to students’ acceptance ability and cognitive level, so as to obtain more efficient teaching effect. In this process, the evaluation of students’ cognitive level is the key technology of TFA in the new era [2].In the earlier education system, the cognitive level of students was determined by stage examination, multiple sets of teaching gradients were used, and the TFA was realized by class teaching, group discussion, and separate counseling. However, this teaching mode cannot achieve TFA for a single student. In recent years, due to the full promotion of Internet teaching technology, students use software to realize real-time learning, real-time review, real-time test, real-time evaluation, and real-time change of learning scheme, so as to realize more efficient TFA education [3].Aiming at the Internet teaching system, this study studies the algorithm for evaluating students’ cognitive level in the system, expands the number of support channels of the algorithm’s output data to students’ learning process, and improves the availability and reliability of its output data.


## 2. Basic Composition of Internet Teaching System

In the past, the Internet teaching system is generally used as a supplement to the classroom teaching system, that is, the teaching process is mainly based on teachers’ classroom teaching, and the Internet teaching auxiliary software serves the needs of students’ strengthened review, online self-test, and so on. Since 2018, the secondary schools, secondary education schools, and compulsory education schools have carried out online teaching in an all-round way [4]. Various attempts over the past two years have found that the Internet teaching system is of great significance to comprehensively promote TFA education accurately to students. The teacher’s classroom teaching process is transformed into an auxiliary process of Internet teaching process, which is mainly used for strengthening knowledge points and collective guidance. The teacher’s main work is to design courseware and test questions for different knowledge points, and the Internet teaching system prepares TFA teaching schemes for each student one by one according to the students’ online learning time and online self-test results [5]. The TFA data structure with Internet teaching as the core teaching implementation mode is shown in Figure 1.Figure 1
Schematic diagram of basic logical architecture of online education and examination system.As shown in Figure1, in the network teaching system, the main task of the teacher’s role is to prepare courseware and test questions. At the same time, data management in online learning and online examination is also very necessary. The main task of students in the network teaching system is to participate in online learning and online testing. As the Internet teaching system subdivides the courseware and test questions, each courseware and test question is for one or more knowledge points. When students participate in online learning, the learning time of each knowledge point will be effectively controlled, and when students participate in online examination, the score of each knowledge point will be effectively recorded. In the process of generating the above data, the system will generate the cognitive ability portrait of each student. It is to comprehensively consider the learning time length of knowledge points and the test scores of knowledge points, determine the actual cognitive level of students, and find out the weakness of students’ cognitive ability [6].In the Internet teaching system, teachers can see the specific statistical information for each student, each courseware, and each knowledge point in the background of the system, so as to make a real-time evaluation of the teaching process. The data architecture is shown in Figure2.Figure 2
Schematic diagram of logical structure of teaching achievement analysis data provided by network teaching system.As shown in Figure2, teachers can obtain the following 3 categories of real-time teaching data [7]:(1)
Count the total learning time and the number of test questions of each student at each knowledge point and count the total learning time and the number of test questions of students in a certain period. In these data, teachers can analyze students’ learning enthusiasm and learning participation and timely remind students who place too much emphasis on learning some knowledge points and have deficiencies in learning individual knowledge points.(2)
Count the number of times each courseware is browsed by students and the learning time and analyze the acceptance of the courseware among students. If there are multiple kinds of courseware for specific knowledge points, the courseware can be optimized and the courseware with poor acceptance by students can be eliminated.(3)
Calculate the ratio of each student’s learning time and test score for specific knowledge points, so as to obtain students’ learning efficiency and cognitive ability at specific knowledge points. The ratio data can be summarized and queried in different ways, such as query according to student number, query according to knowledge point number, query according to courseware number, query according to courseware preparation teacher’s job number, and so on.To sum up, the Internet teaching system can provide real-time and intuitive teaching process data and can realize real-time statistics for each student, each teacher, and each knowledge point. The following will focus on the analysis of statistical algorithms.


## 3. Mathematical Model of Students’ Cognitive Ability

From the perspective of mathematical model, students’ cognitive ability is divided into two levels: at the first level, students use shorter learning time to master relevant knowledge points and obtain higher scores for this knowledge point in the exam. At the second level, compared with other students, students with strong cognitive ability will use shorter time and get higher scores. That is, under the first-level evaluation mode, students with higher cognitive ability perform better than students with lower cognitive ability [8].Therefore, under this mathematical model, the student number primary key and knowledge point primary key should be cross queried in the big data of student learning and examination, and the learning time and examination score of students at specific knowledge points should be counted, respectively. The ratio of test score to learning time is recognized as students’ cognitive ability. At this time, we should avoid the ratio result overflow problem when students’ learning time is 0. The mathematical model is expressed by the following formula:(1)Cij=∑i,jTijφ+∑i,jSij×100%,where i represents the student number; j represents the number of knowledge points; Cij represents the evaluation results of cognitive ability of the i-th student at the j-th knowledge point; Tij represents the average score of the i-th student participating in the j-th knowledge point test (the score of each test is changed to the percentage system); Sij represents the total time for the i-th student to participate in online learning about the j-th knowledge point; and φ represents the non-zero correction value ∑i,j∗ means traverse and accumulate all data related to student number i and knowledge point j.The factor output from the model can be summarized and counted directly from two perspectives:(1)
Driven by each student numberi, all knowledge points j are summarized and counted, and the statistical method is the weighted arithmetic average method, and the comprehensive cognitive ability of each student will be obtained.(2)
Driven by the serial numberj of each knowledge point, if all students i are summarized and counted, the statistical method is the unweighted arithmetic average method, and the comprehensive cognitive difficulty coefficient of knowledge points will be obtained. This difficulty factor will be used as a weighting factor.The above statistical methods are summarized into a group of correlation formulas:(2)Ni=1maxj∑jhjCij,hj=1maxi∑iCij,where hj represents the weight coefficient of the j-th knowledge point; max (j) represents the total number of all knowledge points (on the premise of continuous numbering, it is calculated by the maximum subscript); max (i) represents the total number of all students (on the premise of continuous numbering, it is calculated with the maximum subscript); and other mathematical symbols have the same meaning as above.Other statistical methods mentioned above are the basic formulas of arithmetic mean, that is, all data are accumulated and divided by the total count of data. Therefore, due to space constraints, we will not discuss it here. However, by analyzing the above calculation methods, because the numerator is far greater than the denominator in the statistics, the evaluation results are counted in the percentile system, and the statistical results may be far greater than 100 points, resulting in non-intuitive statistical results. Therefore, all data shall be sorted into [0–100] interval by the linear projection method to ensure that the maximum score is 100 and the minimum score is 0. The statistical formula of linear re projection of the percentile system is shown in the following formula:(3)yi=xi−minxmaxx−minx×100%,where xi represents the i-th input of linear re-projection arrangement; yi represents the output item of the i-th input item after linear re-projection; max (x) represents the maximum value in set x; min (x) represents the minimum value in set x; and other mathematical symbols have the same meaning as above.


## 4. Macro-Application Effect of TFA Network Teaching System Driven by Students’ Cognitive Ability

A typical case of colleges and universities promoting TFA teaching experiment is a computer vocational higher education school. The software engineering students of this school have poor grades in the national or provincial unified graduation examinations due to the difficulty of the courses and the few practical opportunities [9]. When students use TFA in 2019 and 2020, students in 2018 are still reading.Therefore, this study compares the final score distribution of 2018 and 2019 students, discusses the performance of TFA Internet teaching method (2019) and traditional teaching method (2018) in the national unified examination subjects, and obtains Figure3.Figure 3
Schematic diagram of the distribution of students’ comprehensive quality in the national unified graduation examination.As shown in Figure3, students in 2019 have significantly improved their scores compared with students in 2018. The highest score increased from 96.5 to 97, and the lowest score increased from 42 to 52. Among the 59 students surveyed in the two grades, the number of excellent students (no less than 80) increased from 10 to 16, an increase of 60.0%. The number of qualified students (no less than 60) increased from 41 to 52, an increase of 26.8%. The data can reflect that TFA teaching method can effectively promote students’ learning enthusiasm, realize TFA teaching concept, and ensure that every student can receive targeted education. Thus, the results of students who use TFA Internet teaching system to finally participate in the national unified examination are significantly improved.Simply evaluating the change range of students’ performance cannot directly reflect the control degree of the TFA Internet teaching system on students’ cognitive ability because students’ graduation performance is directly related to the difference of teachers’ investment and students’ admission performance [10]. Therefore, in the macro-data analysis of this study, we take students in 2019 as an example, read the evaluation results of TFA Internet teaching system on each student’s cognitive ability, and form a histogram with the students’ graduation examination results, as shown in Figure 4.Figure 4
Comparison between students’ cognitive ability and academic achievement evaluation results.As shown in Figure4, taking the evaluation of students’ learning ability by TFA learning system as the independent variable, the final national unified comprehensive quality scores of students are counted, and the data show a highly correlated concave curve. Among them, there are 18 students whose cognitive ability evaluation result is more than 90 points, and only one student whose final examination score is less than 80 points, and no student whose cognitive ability evaluation result is less than 90 points has more than 80 points. If the cognitive ability evaluation result is more than 90 points as the excellent line, the sensitivity is 94.4%. Among 53 students whose cognitive ability exceeds 20 points, only one has a final examination score of less than 60 points, and no student whose cognitive ability evaluation grade II result is less than 20 points has more than 60 points. If the cognitive ability evaluation result of more than 20 points is set as the pass line, the sensitivity is 98.1%. The TFA Internet teaching system based on the cognitive ability evaluation algorithm designed in this study has the leading cognitive ability evaluation results for students to finally participate in the national unified graduation examination and can predict students’ examination results in advance.


## 5. Micro-Application Effect of TFA Network Teaching System Driven by Students’ Cognitive Ability

After the application of the TFA Internet teaching system based on the evaluation of students’ cognitive ability designed by this study, the national unified examination scores of 2019 students have been significantly improved compared with 2018 students, and the pass rate and excellence rate have also been significantly improved, indicating that the system has a certain effect of teaching reform. However, in the previous verification analysis, it was also found that after the system gives the evaluation of students’ cognitive ability, students whose cognitive ability evaluation score is less than 20 are still difficult to reach the pass line [11]. Therefore, under the examination-oriented education model generally implemented in China, the micro-analysis should determine how to fully improve the cognitive ability and the academic performance of students with low evaluation results.Through micro-analysis of the data in the TFA Internet teaching system, it is found that there is a typical convex curve relationship between students’ learning time and learning time, as shown in Figure5.Figure 5
Relationship between student achievement and student learning time.As shown in Figure5, in TFA network teaching system, students with a total score of 70∼75 in the national unified graduation examination have the longest learning time. With the increase of the final score, the learning time of students decreases, but the learning time of students with lower scores is significantly lower than that of students with higher scores. Among them, the students whose learning time is less than 60 in the linear re-projection of the hundred mark system are concentrated in the low score area. In the previous analysis, the evaluation results of cognitive ability of students in low districts are low, coupled with the lack of learning time, which leads to their low scores in the national unified graduation examination.Therefore, from the perspective of teachers, students’ scores can be improved from the following two aspects:(1)
The reason why students with low cognitive ability have low learning time is that their learning process faces great resistance. Their own inertia and physiological protection mechanism lead to their avoidance mechanism of learning. Teachers should actively contact the system to give students with low cognitive ability and give appropriate offline guidance or encourage them to extend the length of online learning.(2)
In the system, the knowledge points that affect students’ cognitive ability should be taken into account in the entity classroom. In the teaching and research group, the courseware design and online examination question design should be fully discussed, the teaching system of knowledge points should be optimized, and the learning difficulty of students to high difficulty knowledge points can be reduced, so as to enhance students’ learning enthusiasm.


## 6. Survey Results of Subjective Application Effect of TFA Internet Teaching System

Judging the usability of the TFA Internet teaching system from the perspective of students, 2018 students who did not use the system and 2019 students who used the system are required to evaluate the course difficulty, self-evaluation mastery, and course affinity, respectively. Table1 is obtained.Table 1
Students’ subjective evaluation results (2018 and 2019) (data source: measured in this study).
Grade groupingCourse difficultyMastery degreeCurriculum affinity201882.467.355.8201973.172.569.4As shown in Table1, students’ evaluation of the difficulty of learning the course decreased by 11.3%, and their evaluation of the mastery and affinity of the course increased by 7.7% and 24.4%, respectively. The data show that after using the TFA Internet teaching system designed by this study based on the evaluation of students’ cognitive ability, students’ self-confidence has improved and their learning difficulty has decreased.By analyzing the 2019 data separately, comparing the students’ test scores of 80∼100 groups, 60∼80 groups, and the following 60 groups, and comparing the students’ answers to the above questions, Table2 is obtained.Table 2
Comprehensive evaluation results of students of different grades in 2019 (data source: measured in this study).
Grade groupingCourse difficultyMastery degreeCurriculum affinity80∼10066.378.579.960∼8074.173.370.6<6084.568.354.2As shown in Table2, with the decline of students’ final examination scores in the national unified graduation examination, students’ evaluation of course difficulty gradually increases, and their evaluation of course acceptance and course affinity gradually decreases. Comparing the evaluation results of students with scores lower than 60 in 2019 with those using TFA network teaching system in 2018, it is found that the evaluation results of students with scores lower than 60 in 2019 are higher than those in 2018, and other evaluation results are lower than those in 2018. In other words, when the low group students in 2019 have higher evaluation results on course difficulty and lower evaluation results on course affinity, they still give the results that the course acceptance is higher than that of the students in 2018, which proves that the system can improve students’ self-confidence to a certain extent.Note: in the above evaluation process, all three questions require students to make a subjective evaluation of 0∼100 points, and the evaluation results are given by the arithmetic mean method.


## 7. Summary

The TFA Internet teaching system based on the evaluation index of students’ cognitive ability designed in this study transfers the focus of course teaching from the classroom to the Internet teaching system and takes Internet teaching as the main teaching base and classroom teaching as the auxiliary. Classroom teaching is mainly used for the explanation of key knowledge points, on-site Q&A, and key guidance to key students. After using the system, students’ learning enthusiasm and learning self-confidence have been effectively improved. The more important innovation is that teachers can more intuitively grasp each student’s specific cognitive ability, customize learning programs for each student with the help of the Internet system, and teachers can have more time to provide key guidance to students with low cognitive ability. The system has achieved application results among 2019 students, and 2020 students also use the teaching method. When 2020 students participate in the national unified graduation examination, follow-up research will be carried out to continue to verify the system and continuously improve the system.



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