Abstract:

Traditionally, self-assessment has been widely used in open and distance education. The development of new digital technologies facilitated the implementation of many Web-based assessment and self-assessment tools. Lately many researchers have reported encouraging results regarding student improvement by self-assessment, not only in distance learning, but also in conventional class. Some self-assessment tools are integrated in e-learning environments, others are standalone.
This paper presents the implementation of W-PARES, a Web-based adaptive self-assessment tool [1], which has been successfully used by students of the Department of Logistics inTechnological Educational Institute of Chalkis, Greece. W-PARES is accessed by three types of users: administrators, course instructors and students. Through a classical Web browser, users communicate with the corresponding Web application on the Application Server where dynamic Web content is created. The Student Self-assessment subsystem is one of the four W-PARES subsystems.
In order to test the particular subsystem, experiments were carried out during five academic years (2007-2012) at the Department of Logistics. Students were examined in the same “theoretical” part of a first semester course, namely “Introduction to Computer Science”. Students that participated to self-assessment tests were volunteers, which were interested to check their knowledge and measure their competence level. Tests were given once during the semester, before the final examination. The Web-based self-assessment tool enabled students to access self-assessment tests using a browser installed on their home computers. Only registered students were eligible for taking a test. For each individual student, an adaptive self-assessment test was produced, tailored to student’s preferences and performance level. Students submitted their answers within specific time limits, which was depended on the difficulty of the questions. After test submission, the correct answers were appeared on screen. Students’ wrong answers were accompanied with comments that give explanations on each particular answer and/or useful links to corresponding educational material. This type of immediate feedback encourages better students’ performance and supports learning process.
As soon as students finished tests, students were asked to answer a number of questions anonymously, in order to give their opinion concerning the usage of the tool. Students’ answers were rather positive. Moreover, an improvement in the average student performance in final “written” exams was observed, which is due to the motivation of studying during the semester instead of studying only a few days before the final exams.

[1] Marinagi, C. (2011). Web-based adaptive self-assessment in Higher Education. Education in a technological world: communicating current and emerging research and technological efforts. Antonio Mendez-Vilas (ed.), Formatex Research Center, Spain ISBN (13): 978-84-939843-3-5, pp. 607-614, December 2011.

Keywords:

On line assessment, e-assessment, adaptive self-assessment.