ADAPTIVE E-ASSESSMENT APPLICATION SCENARIO
A Framework and Concept for the Integration of askme! in Higher Education
Andr
´
e Schulz
1,2
and Christian Saul
3
1
Erfurt University of Applied Sciences, Department of Applied Computer Science, Altonaer Str. 25, 99085 Erfurt, Germany
2
Fraunhofer IDMT, Children’s Media Department, KinderMedienZentrum, Erich-K
¨
astner-Str. 1a, 99094 Erfurt, Germany
3
Fraunhofer IDMT, Business Area Data Representation and Interfaces, Ehrenbergstr. 31, 98693 Ilmenau, Germany
Keywords:
Adaptivity, E-Learning, Higher Education, Assessment, Theoretical Computer Science, Moodle.
Abstract:
To provide the expertise to apply learned knowledge in practice is one main challenge of higher education.
Especially, the engineering graduates need to solve complex problems in their profession and apply specific
expertise in various contexts. These demands encompass less recalling of factual knowledge, but more com-
prehensive key competencies like problem-solving expertise. In this paper, the Adaptive Assessment System
askme! is used to address this challenge. The authors discuss the general conditions of the education of a
course in theoretical computer science offered for students of a Bachelor degree program. Furthermore, this
paper provides an application scenario in which the applied learning platform Moodle will be extended by
adaptive methods of assessment.
1 INTRODUCTION
For educational processes it is crucial to obtain evi-
dence about knowledge and skills that were learned.
Hence, the measurement of learning outcomes is an
integral part of developing successful learning mate-
rials and a critical catalyst for student learning. This
challenge is addressed through assessment.
The assessment in Higher Education (HE) has tra-
ditionally been focused on ”[...] retention and appli-
cation of knowledge in limited contexts as measured
by paper and pencil tests and academic assignments
[...]” (Reeves, 2000). But, as ICT-based applications
become more prevalent in HE, assessment is going
to be of increasing importance, because ”[...] assess-
ment drives learning [...]” (Reeves, 2006) and ”[...] if
something is not assessed in HE, then it is not learned
[...]” (Bain, 2004). The majority of assessment strate-
gies used in HE tend to focus on what is easy to mea-
sure rather than what is important. This is one of the
”[...] strongest deficits of both traditional and recent
course design and implementation in HE [...]” (Ship-
man et al., 2003). But, assessment is crucial to help
students to learn and not just to rate and rank their ef-
forts. Entering the world of employment makes new
demands on today’s graduates. These demands en-
compass less recalling of factual knowledge, but more
comprehensive key competencies (Sippel, 2009).
Therefore, a main objective of HE is to empower stu-
dents to discover findings and to develop knowledge
by themselves so called problem-solving expertise.
This is reflected by a case study, which is developed
in this paper. Specifically, the case study concerns
the course ”Theoretical Computer Science (THI)” at
Erfurt University of Applied Sciences, which is com-
posed of two sub-modules: THI 1 and THI 2. The lec-
tures and seminars offered pursue the following three
main objectives: (1) provide formal and algorithmic
skills, (2) develope analytical skills, design expertise,
construction expertise and project management skills,
and (3) promote methodological competence, social
competence and self-competence.
In this paper, the Adaptive Assessment System
(AAS) askme!, which is being developed at the Fraun-
hofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (IDMT),
is used to address the challenges currently posed by
THI 1 and 2. E-assessment systems must evolve
to further enter the field of HE for engineering sci-
ences. What is needed are personalized assessment
solutions, which are able to cover all levels of think-
ing skills. The AAS askme! addresses this challenge
by taking into account students’ individual context,
prior knowledge and preferences in order to person-
alize the assessment. In order to face the challenge
of didactical interactivity, askme! enables integrating
Interactive Content Objects (ICOs).
132
Schulz A. and Saul C..
ADAPTIVE E-ASSESSMENT APPLICATION SCENARIO - A Framework and Concept for the Integration of askme! in Higher Education.
DOI: 10.5220/0003923601320137
In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2012), pages 132-137
ISBN: 978-989-8565-07-5
Copyright
c
2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
2 ASSESSMENT IN MOODLE
Assessment can be defined as follows: A systematic
method comprising the process of identifying, gath-
ering, analyzing and interpreting information about
peoples knowledge, skills, attitudes and other char-
acteristics aiming at drawing inferences about their
achievements and progresses as well as improving
their learning and development performance.
Such methods are exams, tests, quizzes and sur-
veys. Although the terms are often used interchange-
ably, they differ significantly in terms of the purpose
of measurement and the scope of content covered.
2.1 Opportunities
Moodle
1
is an open source web-based and SCORM-
compliant LCMS and LMS that can be used in many
types of environments such as in education, train-
ing and development as well as in business settings.
For creating assessments, Moodle provides several
assessment options like set up a time limit, config-
ure grading method or control the access. Two main
forms of assessment namely assignments and quizzes
can be used. Assignments allows teachers to collect
work from students, review it and provide feedback
including grades, whereas quizzes allows teachers to
design and build assessments consisting of a set of
questions. Furthermore, Moodle allows creating a
variety of different question types to set up assess-
ments. In general, it can be distinguished between
standard (e.g., multiple choice, true/false, cloze, etc.)
and third-party question types (e.g., drag and drop,
opaque, regular expression short answers, etc.).
For interacting with the questions in the assess-
ment, Moodle supports different question behavior
modes (e.g., deferred feedback, manually graded, im-
mediate feedback, etc.). Feedback can be displayed
at different times during the assessment and can not
only include text, but also images, multimedia files,
equations, etc. Moodle distinguishes between gen-
eral, overall, specific and combined feedback.
Questions created in Moodle can be exported ac-
cording to the IMS QTI 2.0 specification - in addi-
tion to the export in a Moodle-specific text or XML
format. For importing questions, Moodle has a va-
riety of file formats that can be used. This in-
cludes some LCMS-specific question formats (e.g.,
the Blackboard V6+ format, the Examview format,
the WebCT format, etc.) as well as the Moodle-
specific text and XML format. At the moment of
writing, importing questions in IMS QTI format is not
possible.
1
http://www.moodle.org
2.2 Reality
In the everyday practice, it is not surprising that only
a few of these features are used. LCMS such as Moo-
dle are mostly used only to provide educational con-
tent, whereas the assessment possibilities of Moodle
are sparsely used. Even the THI courses have only
used basic possibilities of the assessments so far. Fo-
cussing the lectures, Moodle was only used to pro-
vide additional learning material. Thereby, Moodle
resources like labels, pages or files were used to pro-
vide information or to download presentation slides.
In addition, Moodle activities like forums were used
to exchange experiences and problems.
For assessment purposes, both of the aforemen-
tioned methods (assignments and quizzes) were used.
In terms of quizzes, tests were provided in addition
to the exercises delivered during the presence semi-
nars. The results of the students were included into
the grading of the course, but they are also offered
for self-studying purposes. But, the range of question
types used were very limited. Mostly multiple-choice,
embedded answers (cloze) and true/false questions
were used to assess the students’ knowledge. Miss-
ing question types were tried to cover by assignments.
However, assignments are associated with an huge ef-
fort for correcting.
The use of e-learning systems in general and e-
assessment in particular points to some deficiencies
in practice.
2.3 Deficiencies and Problems
Especially theoretical computer science deals with
some very complex issues, which can not be covered
by the standard question types provided by Moodle.
The problem is not asking the questions, but rather
giving the answer and its automatic grading. As an
example, let us consider a task in which a pushdown
automaton is to be developed, which should recognize
a given language L(G) =
a
i+ j
b
i
a
j
|i, j > 0
. If we
want to combine different batched results and find-
ings to create a complex scenario, the limits of the
standard assessment features in Moodle are already
far exceeded.
The learnability of theoretical computer science is
generally not very easy. This is due to the mappabil-
ity of many serious issues in a practical and complex
relationship. In fact, these are not ideal conditions
for the creation of scenarios in which learners fully
can immerse and to experience it. But the authors of
the present paper are convinced that this state must be
changed.
ADAPTIVEE-ASSESSMENTAPPLICATIONSCENARIO-AFrameworkandConceptfortheIntegrationofaskmein
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133
3 FRAMEWORK
Increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of HE can
not be guaranteed solely by the use of e-learning sys-
tems. In the following, several requirements are dis-
cussed, and matched against the askme! functionality.
3.1 Advanced Question Types
Theoretical computer science deals with very com-
plex problems. In some rare cases, they can be cov-
ered by conventional question types. Questions such
as (i) create a context-free grammar that generates
the language L(G) or (ii) create a pushdown automa-
ton that recognizes the language L(G) far exceeds the
core functions of classical LCMS like Moodle.
Facing the challenge, askme! enables to create ad-
vanced question types by integrating ICOs like Web-
bles (Arnold et al., 2012), PATTI (Klein et al., 2010),
RemoteLab (Wuttke and Henke, 2008) or WLABEL
(Loureiro and Depover, 2005). Each of the ICOs
allows setting input parameters, interacting with the
tool, constructing hypotheses based on prior knowl-
edge and their validation by observing the effect of
changes.
3.2 Integrability of Third-party Tools
For some fundamental problems in theoretical com-
puter science, tools have been developed, that offer
very high potential as an illustration and for practical
exercise. However, the offer is limited mostly to sin-
gle special cases. The only option to integrate such
tools into a learning resource is to insert a link to the
external tool. A real integration into individual prac-
tice and teaching offer is desirable, but requires well-
defined interfaces.
And again, askme! faces this challenge by inte-
grating these tools as ICOs. It enables the assess-
ment of the upper levels of Bloom’s cognitive tax-
onomy (HOTS) by encouraging the students to apply
their knowledge in new situations to solve unexpected
problems, by that way creating new knowledge. This
complements the system’s ability to assess LOTS in
a holistic adaptive assessment process addressing all
levels of thinking skills.
3.3 Automation of the Grading
Direct feedback when editing tasks promotes the
recognition of errors. However, this can rarely be im-
plemented in a regular curriculum. The large number
of students and the limited staff capacities play a con-
siderable role in this case. A key objective is to give
each student the opportunity to review the own knowl-
edge and quickly comprehend errors in the context of
problem solving. E-Learning systems do offer the po-
tential to guarantee this, but for complex exercises,
they quickly reach their limits.
askme! faces this challenge by taking sophisti-
cated feedback techniques and methods into account,
which results in providing feedback that is appropri-
ate for the students’ context, knowledge level, in-
dividual characteristics and preferences (Saul et al.,
2010). Feedback can not only consists of textual in-
formation, but also graphics, audio and video. In ad-
dition, feedback is classified according to the levels of
verification and elaboration incorporated. This results
in five feedback categorizations, which supports their
use in adaptation rules.
3.4 Practicability of the Authoring
For the acceptance and practical use of software sys-
tems, their practicability is of crucial importance. In
general, the LMS and the e-assessment in particular,
this concerns mainly the creation of content.
askme! faces this challenge by providing ques-
tion and test authoring in an accurate way based on
a well-designed user interface. It requires autho-
rization and provides secure use according to user
rights. Moreover, the sustainability of the questions
created by askme! is guaranteed by the conformance
to the IMS QTI v2.1 specification. The integration
of askme! with established LCMS (e.g., EDMedia,
Moodle, ILIAS) is realized through a generic inter-
face (Saul et al., 2011).
3.5 Personalization of the Tests
Although online-assessments were the first imple-
mented and are one of the most interactive compo-
nents in LCMS (Brusilovsky and Miller, 1999), there
are some problems to be addressed. This includes
more technical ones such as user identity verification
and security issues and more general ones such as per-
sonalization aspects (Vasilyeva et al., 2007). Person-
alization in online-assessments has to consider indi-
vidual and social aspects to avoid treating all students
in the same manner and to prevent the feeling of get-
ting lost in the masses (Geister and Rastetter, 2009).
askme! faces this challenge by selecting questions
dynamically. Based on rules and the last response of
the student, appropriate questions are dynamically se-
lected at runtime. This allows authors of tests express-
ing their didactical philosophy and methods through
the creation of appropriate rules.
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4 APPLICATION SCENARIO
Only the practical application shows the meaning of
theoretical concepts. In order to realize this a appli-
cation scenario for the complex course of theoretical
computer science in the Bachelor program of applied
computer science was developed.
4.1 Didactic Concept
The objectives of the course are (i) to provide formal,
algorithmic skills, (ii) to develop analytical skills,
design expertise, construction expertise and project
management skills, and (iii) to promote method-
ological competence, social competence and self-
competence.
The didactic concept of the whole event is based
on the blended learning approach. Besides the ba-
sic content (taught in weekly lectures), accompanying
exercises are offered. In addition to the face-to-face
lectures, also additional digital content and learning
opportunities (e.g., lecture slides, especially the lec-
ture exercises, tests and additional interactive learning
tools) are offered through Moodle.
The course concludes with a complex test where
the content of the two sub-modules is tested. It is cru-
cial that the knowledge imparted is not reproduced,
but also comprehended and applied in this situations.
However, it is important to design the learning pro-
cess for students so that the training will promote the
problem-solving skills optimally.
4.2 Didactic Implementation
An extension of e-Learning opportunities offered by
the adaptive e-Assessment system askme! is intended
to be a first step towards the improvement of teach-
ing. In the current Moodle course the core features
of Moodle are used. Moodle resources like labels,
pages or files and Moodle activities like forums, as-
signments and quizzes are used.
There is no visually apparent difference. The ob-
jective of the present paper is to evaluate askme! in
practice. To ensure this, only the core functionality of
Moodle can be used.
On the one hand, the practicability of the au-
thoring process and the resource management perfor-
mance must be ensured. On the other hand, the com-
parison to e-learning using traditional assessments
must be ensured. One obvious option is to leave the
didactic structure of the previous course. Only the
assessment elements are implemented internally by
askme! and appear as Moodle assessment activities.
4.3 Adaptivity
The user-driven customisation of system-parameters
is understood as adaptability, while an automatic,
system-controlled adaptation to changing conditions
is known as adaptivity (Leutner, 1995; Blank, 1996).
According to the remarks on the basic functional-
ity of adaptive software systems the essentially three
phases of the adaption must be considered in the im-
plementation of askme! (Brusilovsky, 1996). Or, as
Marcus Specht (1998) formulated it: ”To increase the
quality of technology anhanced learning it is impor-
tant to distinguish what should be adapted, to what
features should it be adapted and how should it be
adapted”.
The objectives of adaptation are: (i) avoid treating
all students in the same manner, (ii) Identifying and
rectifying individual shortcomings and deficits, and
(iii) Encouraging students to actively thinking. The
means of adaptation are: (i) Sequencing of Questions
and (ii) Presentation of Feedback. The information
for the adaptation are: (i) Performance of the student,
and (iii) the Student Profile. The process of adaptation
is (i) based on IF <Condition> THEN <Action>
rules and (ii) Forward chaining.
4.4 Technical Implementation
The integration of the AAS askme! with the LCMS
Moodle was done according to the approach pro-
posed in (Saul et al., 2011) by using the OPAQUE
(Open Protocol for Accessing QUestion Engines)
2
It
is based on SOAP and allows LCMS to delegate the
presentation of questions, the scoring of responses
and the generation of feedback to a remote question
engine.
In the following, an arbitrary testing procedure is
described (see Figure 1): (1) Question is presented,
(2) Student takes the questions and finally submits an
answer, (3) askme! evaluates the answers, (4) askme!
examines the condition for the rule, and (5) askme!
updates the student profile with the results of the test.
Student
User Profile
Adaptive Test
(Set of Questions and
associated Rules)
askme!
(Adaptation-Engine)
(2)
(4)
(3)
(5)
(1)
Figure 1: Technical Implementation.
2
https://github.com/timhunt/moodle-qtype opaque
ADAPTIVEE-ASSESSMENTAPPLICATIONSCENARIO-AFrameworkandConceptfortheIntegrationofaskmein
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135
5 EVALUATION
Besides the practical realisability of a system, it is
critical that the end users perceive the system as a sup-
porting system and accept it. Based on a formative
evaluation experiences for the further development as
well as strengths and weaknesses of askme! will be
determined.
The first deployment of askme! should take place
within the framework of the application scenario de-
scribed in Chapter 4. In the following discussion, the
actual experimental conditions are described.
5.1 Objectives
The integration of askme! in a real teaching and learn-
ing scenario is the basis to obtain important experi-
ence of the technical feasibility and practicability of
the system. In further considerations, the acceptance
of teachers and students, the effort for teachers and the
benefits for learners should be considered in detail. In
this context they are regarded as long-term goals for
the following evaluations, but should remain in mind.
The major objective of the evaluation is to esti-
mate the benefits for learning. This essentially relates
to the investigation of the efficiency and effectiveness
of learning.
5.2 Definitions
The efficiency is generally defined as the ratio of ef-
fort to do something, and the benefits achieved. Fol-
lowing this understanding, the efficiency of learning
describes the relationship between learning time and
learning benefits. According to the authors view an
intensive investigation of the benefits and success of
learning isn’t useful at this initial evaluation. There-
fore, the present evaluation is limited merely to the
investigation of the learning effort in terms of time
needed for it. The learning benefits or learning suc-
cess will in simplified form equated with the grading.
The effectiveness can generally defined as the
value of the outcome of an action. In the considered
action ”learning”, the grading or scoring can be seen
simply as the value of the result.
5.3 Question, Hypotheses, and Criteria
The main problem of this evaluation can be sum-
marised by the following research question:
Is there an increasing of the efficiency and ef-
fectiveness of learning through personalised
E-assessment?
Based on this research question, the following hy-
potheses can be form:
1. The more personalised e-assessments are de-
ployed, the better the grades in the final test.
2. The more the assessments are adapted to the indi-
vidual characteristics, the less time is needed for
proper execution.
3. The more personalised e-assessments are used in
the course, the more rapid decreases the frequency
of errors.
Out of the question and the hypotheses three research
criteria were extracted: (i) learning time, (ii) number
of errors and (iii) grades.
5.4 Research Design
The key to successful evaluation with authentic and
useful result is the choice of research methods. Essen-
tially quantitative and qualitative research approaches
can be distinguished (Flick, 2002; Lamnek, 1995).
To evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness, quanti-
tative methods are particularly suitable. But to get
an impression of the usability, the practicality, and
the didactic approaches using qualitative methods are
reasonable, too. Therefore, a methodological mix
of qualitative and quantitative research approaches is
chosen.
The population of the study is represented by the
participants and the tutors of the THI 2 course. A to-
tal of about 85 students in the second Semester of the
Bachelor degree program AI participating in the lec-
ture. The period of evaluation is limited to one full
semester. The sample includes all students participat-
ing the course THI 2.
Regarding the large number of different data col-
lection methods (Schnell et al., 2008) the authors
chose especially the log-file analysis, in addition to
the questionnaire methods - for economic reasons,
and the handling. The non-reactively data collection
by log files (log file analysis) is of high practicability.
Moodle provides comprehensive data. Aspects for ex-
ample the frequency of usage or the elapsed time for
processing a task, and their evaluation are logged. In
addition to that, a survey of quantitative data will be
used. Besides general topics e.g., to the usability, spe-
cial issues of askme! are requested.
The purely quantitative questionnaires provide
only little information about which personal reasons
have led to the statements.Qualitative aspects are
requested to complement the quantitative question
items. With the help of free text fields, the subjects
should specify, inter alia, the reasons for their deci-
sions.
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6 CONCLUSIONS
Adaptive e-Assessments are able to support students
to develop methodological competencies. That is one
of the motivating hopes, which underlying the present
paper.
Discussing motivational aspects of higher educa-
tion and emphasizing the requirements of the case
study shows that e-Assessments could be a solution.
Focussing teaching of theoretical computer science
showed the precise requirements could be fulfilled by
askme!. The developed application scenario will now
serve as the basis for new insights and cause debate
potential in the field of educational research. The au-
thors would like to share this work by the research
community, to take part in this process.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the cooperation
with a larger number of scientists and engineers who
have contributed to the development.
This work has been supported by the Thuringian
Ministry for Education, Science, and Culture within
the project iCycle under contract PE-004-2-1.
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