Components
An e-testing system designed to focus on lower level associations comprises two components: (1) an assessment engine; and (2) an item bank. An assessment engine comprises the hardware and software required to create and deliver a test. Most e-testing engines run on standard hardware so the key characteristic is the software's functionality. There is a wide range of software packages. The software does not include the questions themselves; these are provided by an item bank. Once created, the engine uses the item bank to generate a test. Traditional paper-and-pencil testing is similar, but the test is pulled from the bank at only one time, when it is sent to publishing.
The creation of the item bank is more costly and time consuming than the installation and configuration of the assessment engine. This is due to the fact that assessment engines can be bought "off the shelf" whereas an item bank must be developed for each specific application.
An e-assessment system designed to focus on more sophisticated forms of knowledge requires some sort of interactive activity and a system for inviting students to reason or solve problems around that activity. One influential program of research is known as Evidence Centered Design, or ECD. ECD involves the use of Bayesian Inference Nets to create a sophisticated model of student cognition, and a set of activities or problems that students work on that allow the system to estimate the individuals understanding of the particular domain.
Read more about this topic: Computer-based Assessment
Famous quotes containing the word components:
“Hence, a generative grammar must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an indefinitely large number of structures. This system of rules can be analyzed into the three major components of a generative grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and semantic components.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)