APPLYING THE BASIS OF A KNOWLEDGE SPACE FOR CONTROLLING THE QUESTIONING OF AN EXPERT

Procedures for constructing a knowledge space by interactively questioning an expert have been recently developed. Knowledge spaces are structures appropriate for the assessment of student's knowledge. A knowledge space is defined as a specific collection of subsets of examination questions from a given field. The basis of a knowledge space is the smallest sub-collection of a knowledge space from which the knowledge space can be reconstructed. During the procedures for constructing a knowledge space, the expert is asked to accept or reject certain assertions on the set of examination questions. The number of possible judgments is reduced by omitting those judgments which can be inferred from previous judgments. The results of this paper can be applied to construct the basis of a knowledge space from the judgments of an expert. In this manner, previously suggested procedures for questioning experts can be improved. First, the number of iterations required to decide whether or not a judgment can be inferred from previous judgments is reduced considerably, and second, the new procedure does not require assumptions on the sequence in which the assertions are presented for judgment, Third, the worst case, in which the expert has to make all possible judgments, can be avoided. © 1993 Academic Press. All rights reserved.