Development and Effectiveness Analysis of a Personalized Ubiquitous Multi-Device Certification Tutoring System Based on Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives

Introduction With the trend of the information industry moving towards professionalization, enterprises are paying attention to their employees' individual professional competence much more than to their academic qualifications (Kerckhoff & Bell, 1998). Shanker (1996) argues that the certification authentication mechanism can ensure the skills and knowledge required in the professional field. Xiao (1993) further pointed out that professional certification not only consists of the basic certificate to prove professional competence, but also affects enterprises' hiring decisions. In recent years, in order to enhance students' professional capacity and competitiveness in the job market, many universities have started offering certification tutoring courses, and actively promoting students' attainment of certificates. Therefore, how to develop a more efficient way to enhance students' certification exam pass rates is a very important issue. In recent years, e-learning (electronic learning) has become increasingly popular. In order to maximize the benefits of e-learning, the most important issue is to fully understand students' personal characteristics and learning styles, and then provide appropriate assessment designs. In the past, many researchers used assessment methods to help learners more clearly understand the deficiencies in their learning and to give them appropriate assistance (Perkowitz & Etzioni, 1997; Wang, 2011; Wang, 2008). Bloom, Engelahar, Frust, Hill and Krathwohl (1956) proposed "Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives," which is widely used by educators, and was later expanded into a new version (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). There are many precedents, for example, Shen et al. (2005), to use it as a basis for developing an adaptive assessment system. However, most of these applications are still limited to the use of computers. In recent years, with the advances and popularity of information technologies, wireless networks and mobile devices, most students now own mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs. These devices are portable and can be connected to the Internet. They allow students to be able to learn outside of class time. Chen, Kao and Sheu (2003) pointed out that mobile devices have the advantages of immediacy and convenience. Therefore, this study used a dynamic web technology to construct a multi-device certification tutoring system. Through connecting the Internet or a wireless network to the system, students can use various mobile devices (smartphones, tablet PCs, notebooks) to implement ubiquitous learning. In this study, we developed a personalized ubiquitous multi-device certification tutoring system (PUMDCTS) based on "Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives" and applied it to help students obtain the HTML certificate. After the students finish the online tests, the system will provide a Bloom capability indicator so that they can know their learning status. In addition, according to the students' weaknesses, the system provides strengthening practice by adding weight when assigning test questions. We hope that the certification exam pass rate of students can be improved through this system. Finally, we also designed an experiment to explore the effectiveness of using the system. Compared with the traditional computerized certification tutoring system, the learning effectiveness as a result of using PUMDCTS was enhanced. In addition, we also interviewed students to elicit their views on PUMDCTS. Literature review Development and trends of certification tutoring systems With the increasing importance of certification, many researchers have started improving and researching certification tutoring systems. For example, Hwang, Chen, and Wang (2012) imported the technology of the interactive multimedia e-books into their certification tutoring system. Xie, Hwang, Bai, Lin and Tseng (2012) combined QR Codes (Quick Response Codes) with their certification tutoring system to implement mobile-learning. …