Abstract
E-learning is considered in present as an important research area in the domain of education's sciences, as it has opened new ways of learning for many people.
E-assessment has been widely used since the development of e-learning exist. However, what most electronic exercises and test do, is to transform the paper exercises and exams into electronic format. This is clear from the types of questions used by most e-learning and e-assessment platforms.
In order to overcome such limitations and gain more control over types of questions, we have developed a model of classifying, indexing and selecting the topics for multiple choice questions. Our model was inspired from the graph theoretical knowledge model of Kasyanov and uses a graduate hierarchical representation of knowledge, from basic definitions of simple notions, concepts or principia until the relationship understanding.
We used the following four grades which divide all students on novices, beginners, advanced students and expert. The novice are possess only knowledge of basic notions; the beginners can define composite concepts and exemplify them, eventually to identify connection relationship between concepts related at distance <= 2 , the advanced are able to to identify connection relationship between concepts, methods or principia related at distance grater that 2, and the experts can compare different methods or principia, by putting in evidence similarities and differences, or can propose generalizations of some concepts or methods. This classification moves the accent of the knowledge evaluation of a student from the concept definition understanding to relationship understanding.
We also proposed a random computer-based selection of questions' topics in order to propose a graduated questionnaire to the students, where the questions are classified in the four levels of difficulties according with the above classification of the student's knowledge: novice questions, beginner's questions, advanced questions and, expert's questions. The final tests will contain a pondered selection of questions, from the lowest level of difficulty to the highest one.
This method moves the accent of the knowledge evaluation of a student from the concept definition understanding to relationship understanding. |