Advancing Electronic Assessment

A computer-aided assessment system is presented that has been designed to produce and deliver tests to the Hellenic Air Force Academy students and assess their performance. The system is called e-Xaminer and is intended for use in both undergraduate courses and distance learning post-graduate programs of the Academy. The e-Xaminer uses meta-language concepts to automatically generate tests, based on parametrically designed questions. Tests intended for different students may entail differences in the arithmetic parameters. Additionally, different tests may be composed from different but equivalent and randomly chosen sub-questions. The system may also present each student with a scrambled sequence of the same questions, as a counter-measure against cheating. Examinations are delivered via a webbased interface; an automatically generated program marks the answers submitted by each student. e-Xaminer allows the implementation of question parameterisation and counter cheating measures, so that electronic tests become significantly different and more powerful than traditional ones. Sample problems are presented which show the additional features of the e-Xaminer, intended to facilitate the work of the course organiser in issuing and marking the tests, as well as in combating cheating. This paper focuses on some new, advanced types of questions enabled by electronic assessment; it then compares paper-and-pencil exams to electronic exams; results from a small student poll on the electronic exams are also presented. Finally, the directions for planned future work are outlined.