A Dynamic Web Educational Assessment System

Abstract

Educational assessment is a mutual dynamic process for both teachers and students. Many assessments in universities usually are one-way and one-time pieces of work. At the end of the semester or teaching period, the student fills in a form, and gives his evaluation to the teacher based on some simple general choice. In such a way, the teachers lose their chances to improve their work during the teaching process. On the other hand, students also don’t have much chance to exchange their concern with teachers. This situation is getting worse in the remote teaching system. To solve the above problems, and to enhance the mutual understanding between teachers and students, a web based evaluation system was built for mutual and dynamic assessment. This system is a Java 2 based system running in Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai Campus now. A multi-layer fuzzy evaluation model is used to handle the assessment criteria group in different layers and from different evaluation groups. The users of the system are categorized into three groups: the teachers, the students and the manager. This system is a sub-system of the management system we developed for Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai Campus. After being used for one semester, most of the users showed their satisfaction to the system. In this paper, the structure of the assessment system is discussed. The fuzzy evaluation model is shown with an application example. The components used in the system are displayed. We hope this will give a helpful idea to change the traditional assessment process, and to contribute to the quality control of elearning.