An XML approach to assessment in education

Abstract

Research efforts in the field of computer-aided education are represented by a broad spectrum of applications, from the virtual classroom to remote courses. In these environments, visualizing the progress of students is an important part of the learning process. We have developed an authoring and evaluation tool with which teachers can easily create questions of different types, store them in a database, and then use them to compose exams and autoevaluation exercises of different kinds. The advantages of our system include an improvement in the fulfilment of the teacher's duties; an increase in the responsiveness of the exam results to the level of student understanding; and the potential for using the application in distance learning and self-training. The main novelty of the system is the use of JAVA, XML, JSP, and JavaBeans as a basis for courseware generation. The system described in this article provides a www-based assessment environment, which can be integrated in a set of course materials for delivery on the network. The main objective is to develop a testing environment with instant feedback for teachers and students, using multimedia information and several types of questions.