All entries for February 2007

CAA Fitness for Purpose: Administration

Follow-up to Fit for Purpose? from Computer-aided assessment for sciences

Administering online assessment can be a nightmare—I have lost sleep over it. Although setting the parameters for delivering an exam online will never be entirely straightforward, let me suggest a few desirable features to smooth the way.

Administration

• User Accounts: If a single sign-on (SSO) system, such as the open-software system Shibboleth, can be integrated with a CAA package, an assessment can be made instantly accessible to a group of students registered for a module on the institutional database. At the same time, students signed on to the network have immediate access to all the available assessments for the modules they are registered for. In the absence of SSO, assessment software should make it easy for the details of students permitted to access a given assessment to be uploaded manually, for instance accepting comma-separated values from a spreadsheet containing the appropriate fields. An option to give students permission to create their own assessment accounts is also useful; it should allow them to browse the available assessments and register for any that take their fancy.

• Setting Permissions: When creating an assessment, it should be straightforward for the author to set a whole range of permissions: who can see the test, edit the test, take the test, when they can do so, how long it should last, how many attempts are allowed, who can access the results, and so on. It is helpful if these permissions can be set and subsequently edited in an easily-accessible window, which displays the full range of permissions available. It is also handy to be able to save templates of standard sets of permissions for re-use.

• Sending Feedback: It is vital for an author to have detailed control over (i) the levels of feedback: hints, right or wrong, simple answer, full worked solution and (ii) when it is delivered: directly after an answer is submitted, immediately after the test is completed (feedback, like revenge, is a dish best served hot), or later, after the assessment is closed.

• Answer Records: If the assessment software stores users’ answer files – and only that designed for simple self-assessment doesn’t – then it is very important to be able to search those files efficiently. It should be easy to search all the database fields that are used to create assessments and accounts with all the usual functionality available in a respectable database; thus, for example, it should be possible to pull out all the answers to question 5 on assessment 2 done by students called “Smith” who are either based in the Mathematics Dept or whose students numbers begin with 02 (the year of entry). If the database has a field for email addresses, it should be possible to send emails to selected subsets of registered users containing information about, for example, their results and module administration.

• Analysing Results: I have to confess that I have little experience in this area and that my views on what is desirable and useful are poorly developed. I would welcome some input from more experienced readers here. It is obviously helpful to be able to (i) analyse results in as much detail as the database allows and (ii) present the data in easy-to-grasp numerical and visual ways. A number of standard statistical tests can be applied to the data to provide insight into the success of an assessment and the performance of the users; for instance, one helpful test I have used measures the effectiveness of single a multiple-choice question (as part of a larger exam) in discriminating between students of differing ability (as indicated by their overall performance on the exam). Please let me have your views on the best tests to build into the software, by email or via the commenting option below.

: 08 Feb 2007 11:13 |  Tags: CAA Computer Aided Assessment Software |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem