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administered in the PJIIT building.
Over the years enrollment in online studies has
been growing, as has the number of teachers using
the PJIIT’s e-learning platform to enhance the
quality of their stationary courses. At one point there
appeared the need for an effective and customizable
testing system. The old system did not allow
generation of multiple versions of a test, or ascribing
weights, or difficulty levels to test questions. The
present paper describes how the new system was
built.
2 WHY AUTOMATED ONLINE
TESTING?
As we have mentioned in part 1, testing is closely
connected to assessment and in most courses is used
alongside other methods of evaluating students’
progress. Not all tests are done for the purpose of
assessment though (Bachmann, 1990) – some quizzes
may only function as exercises providing training
opportunities (or the fun part of a course). The type
of test may also vary. While by the term test we
usually mean a set of questions requiring short or
multiple choice answers, some examinations may
involve essay writing, and they will still be called
tests (e.g. Test of English as a Foreign Language).
The system discussed in the paper follows the
standard meaning of the word test, i.e. it is a system
which allows generation of sets of questions which
would be characterized by parameters pre-defined
by the teacher or the examiner. The system is simple
enough to enable formative (ongoing) assessment
using short tests and sophisticated enough for the
purpose of summative (final) assessment which
requires the development of large, complex tests.
Modern teaching methodology stresses the
importance of incorporating technology into all
types of educational endeavors. The rising
popularity of e-learning and blended learning (the
mixture of the traditional and virtual classroom
environments) seems to prove that this is the right
course of action. Whilst nowadays there is a trend
towards more collaborative learning, involving
higher order information processing, testing,
preferably on a computer, is still a vital part of any
well-designed course. In fact the scale of automated
testing seems to be growing rapidly. There are
several reasons (Bednarek and Lubina, 2008; Chapelle
and Douglas, 2006; Paloff and Pratt, 2003):
1. Automated tests are checked quickly, and
learners (or their teachers) get almost instant
feedback. The importance of immediate feedback
cannot be overestimated. It is one of those
features which draw people to e-learning.
Automated tests are ideal for formative
assessment and course monitoring.
2. Automated tests are scalable – the argument
crucial to educational institutions running
examinations. They may also allow creating
several different versions of the same test to
prevent cheating.
3. Computerized testing may allow tests’ self-
adjustment to the level of a test taker. That is
important in, for example, language
examinations, as it shortens the time a test would
take, while at the same time increasing its
accuracy.
4. They free the faculty from tedious test checking.
5. The can be easily modified and updated.
6. They are reusable, especially for formative
assessment. In the case of summative assessment
this is only possible if there is a large enough
repository of test questions to be chosen from.
7. They can be carried at a distance, or at the
school’s premises, depending on the purpose and
type of assessment.
8. Some people are shy or afraid of losing face
while being assessed by a human. Automation
lifts this constraint.
9. They are good for self-study purposes, hence the
proliferation of sites with quizzes, tests etc on the
World Wide Web.
The biggest downside of tests is the fact that the
widespread use of automatically checked tests has
led to the appearance of databases with exam
questions available from the Internet, and that
cheating is easier when technology is used. On the
other hand, there have appeared sophisticated
technologies for the verification of test takers’
identity. Moreover, an institution interested in
security issues can always make sure that the tests
are supervised by people - proctors, teachers or
assistants - in order to minimize the risk of cheating.
Another critical opinion concerning testing is
that it does not encourage high-level information
processing, and promotes guesswork rather than
learning. The quality of a test will always depend
more on the content of test questions than the
technology used. The technology itself is developing
rapidly to allow for even more sophistication. It is
now possible to automatically check quite complex
answers (essays, texts). According to data from
research, the agreement between scores awarded by
one such a system for automated scoring of essays,
called e-rater (the property of Education Testing
AN EFFICIENT TOOL FOR ONLINE ASSESSMENT AT THE POLISH-JAPANESE INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY
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