Implementation of computer assisted assessment: lessons from the literature

This paper draws attention to literature surrounding the subject of computer-assisted assessment (CAA). A brief overview of traditional methods of assessment is presented, highlighting areas of concern in existing techniques. CAA is then defined, and instances of its introduction in various educational spheres are identified, with the main focus of the paper concerning the implementation of CAA. Through referenced articles, evidence is offered to inform practitioners, and direct further research into CAA from a technological and pedagogical perspective. This includes issues relating to interoperability of questions, security, test construction and testing higher cognitive skills. The paper concludes by suggesting that an institutional strategy for CAA coupled with staff development in test construction for a CAA environment can increase the chances of successful implementation

A Slotted Ring Test Bed for the Study of ATM Network Congestion Management

This thesis addresses issues raised by the proposed Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network which will provide a flexible combination of integrated services traffic through its cell-based Asynchronbus Transport Mode (ATM). The introduction of a cell-based, connection-oriented, transport mode brings with it new technical challenges for network management. The routing of cells, their service at switching centres, and problems of cell congestion not encountered in the existing network, are some of the key issues. The thesis describes the development of a hardware slotted ring testbed for the investigation of congestion management in an ATM network. The testbed is designed to incorporate a modified form of the ORWELL protocol to control media access. The media access protocol is analysed to give a model for maximum throughput and reset interval under various traffic distributions. The results from the models are compared with measurements carried out on the testbed, where cell arrival statistics are also varied. It is shown that the maximum throughput of the testbed is dependent on both traffic distribution and cell arrival statistics. The testbed is used for investigations in a heterogeneous traffic environment where two classes of traffic with different cell arrival statistics and quality of service requirements are defined. The effect of prioritisation, media access protocol, traffic intensity, and traffic source statistics were investigated by determining an Admissible Load Region (ALR) for a network station. Conclusions drawn from this work suggest that there are many problems associated with the reliable definition of an ALR because of the number of variable parameters which could shift the ALR boundary. A suggested direction for further work is to explore bandwidth reservation and the concept of equivalent capacity of a connection, and how this can be linked to source control parameters

Piloting CAA: All Aboard

This paper examines the initial findings from a pilot project to determine the appropriateness of CAA software for university wide deployment. The various stakeholders within the institution have been identified and their opinions of CAA have been ascertained. Based on the findings a framework for incorporating CAA into modules is presented along with an analysis of the current barriers to adoption. The results suggest that there is overall support for the adoption of CAA but without support measures in staff development the uptake may be reduced

Evaluating the user experience in CAA environments: what affects user satisfaction?

This paper reports the findings of an experiment to establish students’ satisfaction with various aspects of the user interface in three Computer Assisted Assessment (CAA) environments. Forty four second year undergraduate students in Human Computer Interaction participated in the study. Each student completed three tests using three different CAA software environments. Through the use of two survey instruments, user satisfaction was measured. The results highlight the fact that, in this instance, scrolling did not seem to influence student satisfaction but other attributes, such as navigational structure and question styles, appear to influence it. The students appeared to prefer different CAA environments depending on whether the context of use was for formative or summative assessment

Heuristics for evaluating the usability of CAA applications

Evaluation of usability is well researched in the area of HCI. One widely used method is a heuristic evaluation which relies on a small number of evaluators inspecting an interface to see to what extent it complies with a set of heuristics. Once a problem is identified it is categorised to a heuristic and a severity rating is attached. Severity ratings indicate the potential impact of the problem. Using a corpus of usability problems within CAA this paper reports on the development of domain specific heuristics and severity ratings for evaluating the usability of CAA applications. The heuristics are presented and the paper concludes with practical guidance on the application of the method in CAA

Improved Video Mosaic Construction by Accumulated Alignment Error Distribution

Mosaic techniques have been used to obtain images with a large field of view from video sequences by assembling individual overlapping images. In existing methods of mosaic construction only consecutive frames are aligned. Accumulation of small alignment errors occur, and in the case of the image path returning to a previous position in the mosaic (looping path), a significant mismatch between non-consecutive frames will result. A new method for ensuring the consistency of the positions of all images in a mosaic is proposed. From the resulting improvement in mosaic quality, the new method enables construction of mosaics with a very large field of view.

Strategies for large-scale assessment: an institutional analysis of research and practice in a virtual university

Strategies for large-scale assessment: an institutional analysis of research and practice in a virtual universit