Abstract
Learning analytics is a new evolving research area that deals with data generated during students' interactions with an online learning environment. The collected and analyzed information chunks regarding their behavior, performance and preferences could be used for improvement and optimization of teaching, learning and assessment.
The aim of the current research is to present the developed model for evaluation the quality of online assessment activities in the form of quizzes considering the students' point of view that is published and discussed in scientific papers and the position of students from the Technical University of Sofia, College of Energy and Electronics (CEE). The evaluation of e-?ssessment tasks is still a challenging issue pointing out a wide variety of research problems similar to: a connection between content, structure and presentation of learning and assessment objects, the influence of learning styles on assessment objects, the type of provided feedback and its relevance to the received knowledge. Crossing the scientific repositories just several research papers were found on similar topics that is an indication for the necessity of further exploration and elaboration.
The teachers use their experience and knowledge to prepare e-content in that way to be more interesting, understandable and well visualized and e-classes to be more engaging and motivating. The assessment process as a very important part of the educational process has to be designed correctly and precisely. The quizzes have to be developed, complemented and improved in order to be clearer, to give the students the possibility to show their knowledge to the fullest. When designing the online quizzes, it is necessary to take into account the fact that during their performance, the students cannot ask specific questions, nor get answers to them. Online quizzes are a challenge not only for the students - how to perform well, but also for the teachers - how and in what form to create assessment activities that will enable learners to show their knowledge without unnecessary obstacles and difficulties.
The CEE offers an extended full-time education (during weekends) which allows the students to work and learn simultaneously. That's why, another fact has to keep in mind - at the CEE there are students of a wide age range, respectively with different levels of digital competence?, learning background, preferences, etc. For this reason, their feedback is essential for a better perception and understanding of the quiz questions and, accordingly, for better student performance in this type of assessment.
The research methodology consists of the following procedures: (1) Exploration of scientific literature that is performed through utilization of searching queries in scientific search engines Google Scholar and Google Semantics and scientific databases Scopus and Web of Science. (2) Conduction of students' online testing from two Departments of the CEE in two different e-learning systems: open source Moodle and cloud-based Edu20. The evaluated quizzes are two types: examination quizzes contributing to the final student mark and self-testing quizzes used for improvement of learning performance. (3) Development of a survey tool with an aim to gather students' evaluation regarding the online quizzes and taking into account a wide variety of questions, categorizing in several groups. The purpose is to obtain information for both: students' background and their assessment/perceptions about the implemented assessment activities. (4) Discussion and analysis of received results. (5) Development of a model for evaluating the quality of online assessment tasks in the forms of quizzes.
The questionnaires are developed, the data are collected and results are analysed. The findings point out that the students have positive attitudes to the online assessment activities showing their advantages. Students answers give us possibilities to create an objective framework for evaluation of e-assessment that consists of several layers:
o the first layer includes content, format style and type of questions and answers;
o the second layer reflects on adequate students' knowledge regarding the questions' content;
o the third layer describes the feedback role for students' learning;
o the fourth layer is about the relationship between learning styles and the question type and format.
The full analysis will be presented in the paper content. The created framework will be evaluated and evolved during the next several years. |
Keywords
e-learning, online assessment, students' opinion, evaluation model, learning analytics |