Jan Genci

Knowledge Assessment – Practical Example in Testing

Knowledge assessment is inseparable part of current e-learning technologies. It can be used for self-assessment of students to give them feedback about their progress in a study or for an intermediate or final grading for tutors. However, knowledge tests are not developed with the adequate care. Author’s experience in the area of knowledge assessment led to a confidence the “unstructured” testing is usually used in this process. It means, that many of knowledge tests are not designed to reveal the reached level of knowledge. Moreover, testing suites are reviewed very seldom regarding their validity and items correlation. This paper presents experiences gained during the design and implementation of a specific software focused on teaching several principles of the Unix.-like operating systems. The structure of the specific assignment follows the Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives.

A Few Reflections Regarding Assessment in an E-Learning Environment

E-learning technologies are spread around the whole educational process. Knowledge assessment has become inseparable part of current e-learning technologies. Tutors give students opportunity to check their progress during study but they use assessment tests also for a midterm and final grading. The fact, that knowledge tests are not developed properly was discovered already in the 1950s. But it seems they are still not being developed with an adequate care. Testing items are not designed to reveal the reached level of knowledge—testing suites are very seldom reviewed from the point of view of their validity and items correlation. We believe that current Learning Management Systems (LMS) and their support for an assessment test design and delivering are main source of problems. This paper presents some ideas about required functionality of LMS regarding knowledge testing. Some ideas about grade semantics and misuse of modern communication technologies during assessment are also presented.

Advanced Knowledge Assessment System – Functional and Conceptual Specification

E-learning has become an accepted technology widely used during the last decade. However, main attention was devoted to content development, its presentation and functionality within learning management systems. On the other side, there was not so high interest in the area of knowledge assessment. This contribution deals with the specification of an advanced knowledge assessment system, it includes the functional specification and the conceptual model too.

Design of a system architecture for support of collaborative policy modelling processes

The paper describes a design of system architecture for support of collaborative policy modelling processes in electronic governance. The policy modelling processes, as complex and knowledge intensive activities, combine collaborative creation and analysis of narrative scenarios with agent-based simulation. The proposed architecture will support collaborative approach to the policy modelling (i.e. enhance the modelling processes by collective intelligence). A scope of the proposed system will be specified and platform architecture components, including some practical details regarding their implementation, will be described.

About One Way to Discover Formative Assessment Cheating

Massification of Slovak higher education system requires new ways how to organize educational process. That was why we decided to introduce formative assessment in our course. We immediately registered attempts to cheat during this type of assessment. This inspired us to find effective ways how to discover such attempts. Using timestamps associated with each activity carried out in the Moodle tests helped us to gather relevant data and analyze them. Paper presents approaches we proposed to recognize students suspect for cheating.

How we try to overcome some consequences of higher education massification

The paper presents problems which stem from massification of higher education. It discusses possibilities of overcoming the identified problems presented on the example of the course provided at Technical university of Košice, Department of Computers and Informatics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics. The applied measures consist of a detailed student manual, a formative and summative knowledge test, a broad range of home assignments and comprehensive term assignment. All activities are evaluated by strict scoring system.

Educational technologies for the effective implementation of engineering education

The paper introduces some pedagogical technologies for training of engineers and state their brief characteristics. We address such approaches as project based training, mind maps, theory of the resolution of invention-related tasks (TRIZ), case studies, master classes and business games. At the end we state some experience in comparing the performance of project based and non-project based organized seminars.

Is systematic training worth the effort in a university education

Over the last thirty years the number of students in higher education institutions has increased, which has brought number of problems. Many students attend universities because of various influences, not only to obtain the higher education. Students tend to be less interested and self-motivated to study and do not learn continuously. This paper presents an approach applied in Operating Systems course, specifically to show how the systematic preparation of students (which involves preparatory tests and programming homework assignments every week) influences their results in important tests of the course.

Discovering Cheating in Moodle Formative Quizzes

Introduction of modern information technologies in educational process provides new opportunities for students and teachers. However, apart from indisputable contributions, modern information technologies and its broad usage bring forth some new challenges. This paper presents an approach which we use to detect cheating during formative assessment in Moodle environment. We describe process of obtaining data from Moodle backup archive, its transformation and, consequently, its evaluation. Later we show what possibilities the evaluated data give us to identify potential cheaters. Some ideas about enhancement of cheating detection process are also discussed.

Methods to Ensure Higher Variability of Knowledge Tests in the Moodle LMS Environment

The phenomenon of stealing knowledge tests and their answers by students during the exams is not new for academics. Our department has considerable experience in dealing with this issue within the Cisco Networking Academy (CNA) program and many other courses. Students share “stolen” tests with their schoolmates over the Internet using popular social networks or even publish them on the Internet in order to provide them to anybody who is interested in. We analyze this issue by focusing on the increasing the variability of tests within the Moodle LMS and the results we apply in practice in the course “Operating Systems”.