Robert Pinter

True/false questions analysis using computerized Certainty-Based Marking tests

Writing effective and efficient exams is a crucial component of the teaching and learning process. Exams are a common approach to assess student learning and the results are useful in a variety of ways. Most often, results are used to provide students with feedback on what they have learnt or to evaluate the instructional effectiveness of a course. Certainty-Based Marking (CBM) scores an objective test (usually done on a computer) in a way that rewards students for identifying and distinguishing between individual answers being reliable or unreliable. It penalizes confident errors and rewards a thoughtful and realistic judgment by the student on the basis of limitations of his/her knowledge.

Computer adaptive testing for student's knowledge in C++ exam

In adaptive learning systems for distance learning attention is focused on adjusting the learning material to the needs of the individual. Adaptive tests adjust to the current level of knowledge of the examinee and is specific for their needs, thus it is much better at evaluating the knowledge of each individual. The basic goal of adaptive computer tests is to ensure the examinee questions that are challenging enough for them but not too difficult, which would lead to frustration and confusion. The aim of this paper is to present a computer adaptive test (CAT) realized in MATLAB.

Teaching Computer Science in a web-based environment

Programming is a major subject in Computer Science (CS) departments. However, students often face difficulties on the basic programming courses due to several factors that cause these difficulties. Maybe the most important reason is the lack of problem solving abilities that many students show. This paper describes the web-based environment Pex4Fun from Microsoft Research for teaching computer science. Pex4Fun can be used to teach and learn computer programming at many levels, from high school all the way through graduate courses. Pex4Fun was experimentally used for learning Visual Basic with college students, the results of which are presented in this paper.

Extending the learning object metadata with “recommended” parameters

In this work the authors suggest the introduction of two new parameters apart from the existing ones in the metadata system. In the reusability process when choosing from learning object repository in order to use it in ones own work it may be useful to have some data regarding how that particular learning object was evaluated by other users.

Smartphone application for tracking students' class attendance

The Bologna system makes class attendance mandatory. Recording attendance is inefficient and takes up too much class time especially with larger groups of students. If a professor records student attendance manually, they have to look at student, write it down and go to the next student. If the check takes five minutes of a 45-minute class, that means the teachers lose approximately 10 percent of the class just on attendance instead spending it on teaching. The majority of students have some kind of smart device and these can be used to make an application so that students can log in their attendance. One possible solution for this is the application called Muffin. Muffin consists of a mobile application that students have on their personal mobile devices, an Arduino Uno board with Bluetooth module, and a desktop application. The basic idea is that when students want to log in their attendance, all they need to do is send some log in data to the Arduino board, which is then forwarded to the application on the desktop PC that is directly connected to the board.

Evaluation of knowledge in Object Oriented Programming course with computer adaptive tests

This paper presents and analyzes the results of the application of computer-adaptive testing in knowledge evaluation of the programming language C++. The participants of the research were college students majoring in computer engineering from a polytechnic college (Republic of Serbia) with an average age of 20. The research was conducted over a two-year period. Overall 199 students took part in this research. Two groups of students, the experimental, and the control one were observed. The students in the experimental group took the computer adaptive test and the students from the control group did the paper-and-pencil test. For the purposes of determining the effects of applying the computer adaptive test for knowledge evaluation, the adaptive test was realized in the MATLAB software package. The test consists of multiple choice questions with five possible answers. The questions for the test are divided into three clusters according to the level of difficulty (easy, medium and hard). The score is calculated from the level of difficulty. The difficult questions earn more points than the easy ones. The examinees may answer the same percentage of questions correctly, but an examinee will gain a better score assuming they correctly answered more difficult items. The results of the research show that there is a statistically significant difference between the results of the control and experimental group. The students who worked on a computer-adaptive test achieved a higher average score than the students who did the traditional test. We conduct research with 199 students during a period of 2 years.Control (paper-and-pencil test) and experimental group (computer adaptive test).There is a statistically significant difference between the results of the groups.Students who worked a computer adaptive test achieved a higher average score on test.Computer adaptive test reduce the time for test administration more than 12%.

Code hunt — “hunting” to learn programming

Programming is a major subject in Computer Science (CS) departments. However, students often face difficulties on the basic programming courses due to several factors that cause these difficulties. The most important reason may be the lack of problem solving abilities that many students show. Learning to code can be made more effective if it is perceived as fun by the learner. Code Hunt uses puzzles that players have to explore by means of clues presented as test cases. Players iteratively modify their code to match the functional behavior of secret solutions. The aim of this paper is to introduce an educational, browser-based coding game which can help in learning coding.

Computer adaptive tests: A comparative study

Computer based tests are becoming increasingly important and are thus implemented in all fields of education. The clear advantage of computer adaptive testing is witnessed by the maximal balance of accuracy and efficiency. For purposes of determining the effects of applying the computer adaptive test for knowledge evaluation, the adaptive test was realized in the MATLAB software package. The research was done at Subotica Tech - College of Applied Sciences (Subotica, Serbia) with students from the Department of Informatics. The MATLAB application was compared with two computer adaptive tests with a similar purpose: testing students knowledge of programming languages. The comparison was done for the four basic components that every computer adaptive test has to have: item bank, starting point, item selection algorithm and stopping rule.

COMPARISON OF EXAMINATION METHODS BASED ON MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS USING PERSONAL COMPUTERS AND PAPER-BASED TESTING

Computer-based testing, by facilitating the interaction between teaching and learning, can improve the quality of learning through improved formative feedback which is a key aspect of formative assessment. This study makes a contribution to the research on computer-based testing by examining the mode differences between the paper-and-pencil test and computer-based test. The previously conducted researches in this area dealt with the students of primary and secondary schools. In those researches the points of observation were the students’ successes in mathematics, English and social sciences; no research was done in field of programming languages such as C++ with post-secondary students. The main aim of this study was to find out whether there are differences in the achieved results in two ways of testing: computer-based testing and paper-and-pencil test. Also, the intention was to detect those characteristics of computer based test, which may have a negative effect on students’ achievements. The participants were a representative sample of the population of all engineering students studying computer science at Subotica Tech. The findings of this study led the authors to reach the conclusion that there are no significant differences in scored results for the paper-and-pencil testing and the computer-based testing.

Measuring team member performance in Scrum — Case study

Based upon information received from the industry, one can define the knowledge and skills that are required for an engineer aiming to work in the IT industry. In this paper the authors present a possible method by which the learning process can be made more efficient. The authors highlight some advantages of the project-oriented approach in a programming course at Subotica Tech, an institution that educates professional engineers. In that course the students are developing applications for mobile devices. This novel method is based on the inclusion of the great number of demands from the industry, which the future engineers meet upon entering this sector.