The aims of this paper are: to provide a comprehensive introduction to eDia, an online diagnostic assessment system; to show how the use of technology can contribute to solve certain crucial problems in education by supporting the personalization of learning; and to offer a general reference for further eDia-based studies. The primary function for which the system is designed is to provide regular diagnostic feedback in three main domains of education, reading, mathematics, and science, from the beginning of schooling to the end of the 6 years of primary education. The cognitive foundations of the system, the assessment frameworks, are based on a three-dimensional approach in each domain, distinguishing the psychological (reasoning), the application, and the disciplinary (curricular content) dimensions of learning. The frameworks have been carefully mapped into item banks containing over a 1,000 innovative (multimedia-supported) items in each dimension. The online assessments were piloted, and the system has been operating in experimental mode in over 1,000 schools for several years. This paper outlines the theoretical foundations of the eDia system and summarizes how results from research on the cognitive sciences, learning and instruction, and technology-based assessment have been integrated into a working system designed to assess a large population of students. The paper describes the main functions of eDia and discusses how it supports item writing, constructing tests, online test delivery, automated scoring, data processing, scaling and the provision of feedback both for students and teachers. It shows how diagnostic assessments can be implemented in school practice to facilitate differentiated instruction through regular measurements and to provide instruments for teachers to make formative assessments. Beyond its main function (supporting development toward personalizing education), the eDia platform has been used for assessments in a number of areas from pre-school to higher education both in Hungary and in a number of other countries as well. The paper also reviews results from eDia-based studies and highlights how technology-based assessment extends the possibilities of educational research by making more constructs measurable.

This paper links two research paradigms, one that studies attributes and mechanisms of inductive reasoning and one that tries to make school learning more meaningful and knowledge better understood and more easily applied, by examining how inductive reasoning develops during a significant age range of schooling and how it relates to certain other cognitive functions. Six tests of inductive reasoning (number analogies, verbal analogies, number series, verbal series, coding, exclusion) were devised and administered to 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th grade students ( N 2000). Data were also collected on students’ school achievement, and a test of applied science knowledge was administered to the two oldest samples. The comparison of age groups indicated that the fastest development of inductive reasoning took place between the 5th and 9th grades; a major development was detected before the 5th grade, and only modest changes were found after the 9th grade. Regression analysis models indicated that inductive reasoning accounted for around twice as large a proportion of the results of the test that measured the applied science knowledge in everyday situations as did school knowledge (represented by school grades).