E-Assessment Architecture for Higher Education: A Case Study of University Entrance Exam, Higher Education of Afghanistan

Abstract

Purpose: The main aim of this study is to demonstrate that which e-assessment architecture can be useful and effective for the higher education sector in Afghanistan. Methodology: The research method was design science, where 100 questionnaires were distributed for specifying the functional and non-functional requirements of the e-assessment system. Questionnaires were distributed to 50 lecturers, 20 Administrators and 30 graduate students. This study conducted the structured interviews for analyzing the e-assessment architectures and find an applicable and accurate e-assessment architecture for university entrance exam. In this study, interviewed with five participants and the interview has 24 questions. This study used close-ended questions in the interview and considered different perspectives including interoperability, security, reusability, performance, scalability and flexibility for analyzing the e-assessment architectures. Findings: After analyze the interview results, this study propose the architecture based on NREN for the university entrance exam of Afghanistan’s higher education. This study used the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM) for the evaluating the e-assessment system architecture based on NREN. For this purpose, ATAM workshop established and evaluated the proposed architecture by fifteen experts. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: This study recommended the e-assessment application architecture. After the literature review, we carried out the survey in different higher education institutes, including Kabul Polytechnic University, Kabul University and Kabul Education University and the respondents were the lecturers, students, administrators and the higher education ministry decision makers. The study evaluates the requirements for the e-assessment system.