Assessment Management System: Mans-FCI Experience

Version II is on the way :)

2008-05-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

Versioning; something I have hated lont time ago. I never believed in versioning and its importance till I had to do it myself. Another thing I wondered about for a long time 'Does SW vendors have to remove the original old product that we lived with, liked, and loved that much ? ' I never believed they have to, till I had this experience myself with my lovely http://www.m-assessment.info

If you do not know yet, www.m-assessment.info was part of my master experience. Thanks to ALLH, I had my master thesis finished. www.m-assessment.info is the web site I have as an implementation of my tasks.

But now, it is time to take down www.m-assessment.info to present a new thing. A new thing that matches the new era. Era of: Mobile.

I will not say any more about my lovely www.m-assessment.info except that it is coming back, more powered, more stronger, more prettier, and more... Mobile.

Thank You my lovely web site, I am working on the new version now. Wait for me soon.

Yours...

Haitham A. El-Ghareeb

Crystal Reports

2008-04-27T13:40:00.000-07:00

When you check the current Administration part of the site, you can view the results. System Design results is available at this link

http://www.m-assessment.info/admin/SystemDesignGrades.aspx

It does not look good actually. I use a Data Grid to view the results. I thought about using Crystal Reports to visualize data in a good looking format. I designed the report, and when it came to deploying the reports I was surprised that the server does not deply Crystal Reports. Actually the server does not deply neither Crystal Reports nor Reporting Server. I do not call this a design bug, I'd rather think about it more as a 'Planning Bug' because I have not checked the AMS requirements thouroughly and have not picked a suitable server to host AMS. I am still thinking either I will continue AMS, so I will re-build the system from the very beginning. I am thinking about assigning one of the graduation projects groups of next year to AMS, and when I re-think about it, I figure out that AMS has achieved the required task of it, and it shall retire right now. The thing was: Utilizing SOA in systems won't affect system performance and/or user completion time. I'd rather leave e-Learning tasks to e-Learning Unit of the University, so I am really thinking about spending more time with guys in the e-Learning Unit "as I am going to stay in Egypt for a while".

I believe Moodle holds features richer than AMS. AMS might turn to be a history soon. If this will be the case, sure I will write a separate entry announcing this.

Happy Holidays

2007-12-27T06:56:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays to All of us, hopefully we all enjoyed, enjoying, and will enjoy all the Holidays in Peace and Love under God Mercy.... Amen

Design Bug

2007-12-27T06:44:00.000-08:00

This huge mistake is caused only as a result of 'Lack of Experience'. Thankfully I am working on AMS right now so I can really find out how much I was missing from practical experience. I found out that: I have no 'Classes' in the system, and honestly this is not accepted to me. I have a web pages that insert, update, delete, and assess data from a database but I did not use Object Oriented Programming. It is more like a database interface, nothing more. I shall start correcting this problem, but I won't start doing so till students finish the Second Year Data Structure assessment.

I thought about the Classes I shall have in the system, and how they relate to each other.

Assessment ( that includes questions, each assessment can have different formats)
Student ( If I handled student as a class in the first place, I should have solved too many situations I have been through in building AMS)
Courses

I gotta admit I got stuck in the gap between Relational databases and Object Oriented Concepts. I read a lot about this gap in the books (specially Object Oriented, and Object Relational Databases books) but I have never felt it like I did this time.

I learned database (if I am allowed to say I learned database) before I learned Object Oriented Concepts, so I am totally affected with Relational Databases concepts too much more than Object Oriented Concepts. I even start building systems by building databases, and apparently this is not completely wrong. I missed the OOP completely, I don't have any UML diagrams, and I know this is a disaster, but this is what happened. The funny thing is: Students are attending their assessments successfully, without a single class in the AMS :)

Thanks to God, merciful God
:)

Session Timed Out

2007-12-27T06:34:00.000-08:00

Here is the scenario:

I have the questions with correct answers stored in the database. Currently, we support only two types of questions: True/False and MCQ. I load the questions in the Page Load event, then assign items to labels and radio buttons and tried assigning correct answers to variables so to use them in marking but I faced the situation where all the results are Zeros.

Why? coz the correct answers change with page post back, so I immediately thought about storing the correct answers as session variables, and it worked perfectly with me. Till a situation took place with one of the students while he was attending the assessment. He exceeded the Session Time. The page did not expire till he submitted the answers and the CheckAnswers functions started to read the session variables!! Ooooooops! There are no session variables coz session timed out.

Two things:

I shall edit the Web.config file 'debug' section, coz I don't wanna students to see error details
I shall add an exception handler for the Session Timeout Exception
Actually, I shall add timer to the assessment. Assessment shall not be left open the way it is now (though it is not anymore coz I figured out the session timeout scenario and notified students that they shall finish the assessment within 5 minutes, and thankfully it is going well), but I can not depend on this. AMS must upgrade

And what I am doing now? I am defining AMS Bugs so I will start fixing them as soon as I can.

By the way, I know that default Session Timeout is 20 minutes so I did not see this exception coming, but after this experience I can tell: Do not expect server administrators to be leaving default settings as it is, ask my server administrator and he will assure you this tip ;)

Introduction to Bugs

2007-12-27T06:20:00.000-08:00

I am not defending myself when I say I made AMS only in couple of days; so what, there are mistakes I shall have not done. The thing is: This is my first real system. I remember that while I was testing the system, the first aspx page I wrote was the one with a button and a label box, and one event handler: Button Click. When I click the button the label text changes to be "This is Working". I had a problem with believing one day I will do something working. Honestly, this experience changed me a lot. Regarding the Bugs, I have read millions of times that no matter how much you test the system it still has bugs, and I believe this. So, what do you think about a system that was prepared in two days and by real novice System Architect ?

I have never feared criticism, and waiting for Bugs you can find so we; together can make AMS better.

Thank You

Data Structure is Available

2007-12-26T07:06:00.000-08:00

Now, Second Year Students at FCI Mansoura can take the online assessment for Data Structure. Assessment consists of 5 True/False Questions with full mark out of 5. The database holds the names of 440 students and 200 True/False Items.

For Questions, IDs, and Passwords Please mail me at:
haitham_elghareeb@yahoo.com

Thank You

Important

2007-12-12T14:48:00.000-08:00

Please check the following Blog Entry for details about the pause of the system

http://helghareeb.blogspot.com/2007/12/msg-delivered.html

Hope systems activity will be back as soon as possible, though I am not sure.

Thank You

System Design is Ready

2007-12-08T02:20:00.000-08:00

It took me five hours to insert the 197 student names of System Design, the 100 True/False Questions, and the 50 MCQs. It was quiet an experience for me alone to insert this huge amount of data; I have never tried to work as a data entry, but still an amazing experience. I really want this thing to work, and I am working a lot on it. System Design Exam will be on: Wednesday 12th of December, and Thursday 13th of December. Will let you know the experience day by day.

Wish me Luck

Interface Design

2007-12-08T02:13:00.001-08:00

If you think interface is the last thing to design in your web site, then believe me you are making a big mistake. If you believe interface does not deserve the design effort, and two or three pictures will be enough, then again - you are making a mistake. Please take care that: Interface gives life to your Web site. Most of the time, users do not care that much about the programming in your Web site, and the value it adds to their lives as much as they care about the interface. They love to see a Web site that tracks their eyes, keeps them interested no matter how long they spend there, and attracts them within the usability and simplicity rules of: Web sites.

I had this experience myself with this site. I even started programming without caring that much about the interface, so what? I shall add the functionality first, then design the site, and believe me: I was wrong.

I thought that I will add two or three pictures to the site and it will be amazing, but it did not. I had to contact a Graphic Designer I know to give me a hand at this site, till it turned to the way it is now, and I had to go through hell to deliver it the way it is now. It needs some tricks to wrap the pages you have already built within the new interface you have added, specially if you are not following the standards; and that was the case.

Any way, thankfully I managed to unleash the site with this interface; that will stay as it is quiet long enough. Hopefully you like it. Please for comments regarding the interface design, do not hesitate to mail me.

Services

2007-11-26T14:39:00.000-08:00

I am not sure where did that came from, but I think about system as collection of services [i]. This gives at least three tangible advantages [ii]:

Reusability: When you add the functionality as a service in your application, it becomes reusable more than you think. Let's take the easiest example: The Random Number Generator. I wanted a good random number generator, so I searched over the internet for one, and I found this one. It seemed really interesting; depending on the server clock [iii], so I decided I will consume it. I felt the Reusability advantage with I wanted to generate 5 random numbers to be used for retrieving the MCQs, and another 5 numbers for retrieving the True/False questions. I did not have to rewrite the random number generator code for the TF Qs, I just reused it.
Single Code File: Later, I noticed that this Random Number Generator can produce repeated values, which is not accepted. I had to modify the code to eliminate redundancy. Because Random Number Generator exists in a single file, I needed to modify this only file.
Modifiability: If you checked the article before this one, you should have found the part that talks about: Adding an email field to Students table. So, when I add this field, do you think current stored procedures and / or direct SQL statements will continue working peacefully, or I will just start getting the non lovely debugging page ? Well, if you hate this page; like me, you will do anything to avoid seeing it, and one of those things you can do is using: Services. Let us see, I have implemented the database; without the email field for student, implemented the stored procedure, consumed it in the Student Web service, exposed the service, consumed it in the application, and it is working. When I add the email field, I will need to write a new stored procedure, add a new method to the Student Service, update the Student Service Web reference at the application, and start using the new service immediately leaving the old one running and leaving existing application not affected.

Those are the direct effects I felt immediately when I implemented Web services in the Assessment Management System. Later, we will discover many advantages of presenting our Information Systems as collection of services [iv].

During my previous evaluation of Stored Procedure against Dynamic SQL [v], Performance was not affected by implementing one over the other; so it is up to you to decide the way you will go. Now, we have two stored procedures:

Insert Results
Insert Passwords

And the following Services:

Random Number Generator
Student
Results
Grade
MCQ
True / False

--
[i] Web services are not Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) despite the fact that Web services are the main SOA enabler. For more discussions about that topic, please contact me.

[ii] Those entries does not include definitions that can be used for scientific research. You know where to get those definitions, but here I am relating my background with the experience I gained from implementing that system.

[iii] Discussions over the internet regarding efficiency of random number generators are widely available. If you are interested in such a topic, you might want to take a look.

[iv] My Master Thesis is entitled: Evaluation of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in e-Learning. I think I have designed and implemented enough SOA based applications to feel SOA's effect.

[v] This evaluation was a Performance one; so from performance perspective Stored Procedures and Dynamic SQL is the same at performance. Still the fact remains that; from Security perspective, it is not a recommended practice to include Dynamic SQL Statements in your application. I use a hybrid of both techniques.

Database

2007-11-26T14:23:00.000-08:00

Basically, there are three approaches for building any Information System:

Top-Down: I think about this approach as the one that starts by designing the interfaces, and building the system that fits and satisfies those interfaces. This approach has the advantage of getting users satisfactions and limiting clients' expectations before implementations. Unfortunately, this approach fits well only with new systems.
Bottom-Up: We start defining current Information System components, study system requirements, design the suitable database and services, then compose the interface that fits those designs. This approach fits the scenario where we need to edit current/existing systems, or we think about Information Systems in the form of Services. It is great in integrating different systems.
Agile: It is the combination of both in a certain way that enhanced programming and teams collaborations [i].

Though this is a new Information System that does not need to integrate with other systems; till now, but I started with database design. Database is really so simple, it did not even needed the effort to go through the Three Normal Forms [ii]. Current Assessment Management System consists of the following tables:

1. Student
ID, University_ID, Name

2. Course
ID, Title, Description

3. Assessment
ID, Title, Course ID

4. MCQ Items
ID, Question, Choice 1, Choice 2, Choice 3, Choice 4, Correct Choice, Assessment ID

5. True False Items
ID, Question, Answer, Assessment ID

6. Student Results
Stuudent ID, Assessment ID, Date, Result

7. Passowrds
Student ID, Password

I have highlighted Foreign Key relationships in the red color[iii]. I am so suspicious regarding students and their welling to pass passwords to each other, so I thought about the following: I will take the passwords away from students table, generate passwords automatically, and make it available to them, either before assessment [iv] or at the time of taking the exam. Making passwords with me at the exam time gives me the option of assuring that everyone is taking only her/his password.

--
[i] Ask Seyam for more details. His master thesis is about "Agile Methodologies"

[ii] Ask Codd, C. J. Date, or Thomas Conolley about those three forms

[iii] I thought about adding an E-R Diagram or a Database Diagram to illustrate the database, then I thought it is really so simple.

[iv] I think the optimum solution is to generate passwords automatically for each assessment, and mail them to students at the assessment day. Regarding exams, we will deliver passwords personally. But, that will need the modification of Students Table to include the email field.

Requirements Gathering

2007-11-26T14:18:00.001-08:00

I start building the system by defining System Requirements, and Application Domain. Assessment Management System will provide a Web utility to assess students online. It will not need to integrate with any other systems, so its application domain is really so simple.

We need three areas (Pages) for the application:

1 - Administration Pages

1.1 Manage Students Data ( Insert, Update, Delete, Display All)
1.2 Manage Courses Data ( Insert, Update, Delete, Display All)
1.3 Manage Assessments Data ( Insert, Update, Delete, Display All)
1.4 Manage Assessment Items Data ( Insert, Update, Delete, Display All)

2 - Take Assessment Page

2.1 Assessment Template: Page with Two Parts: 5 Questions MCQ,
and 5 Questions True/False

3 - Results Page

3.1 Display all supported courses, related with assessments, and questions
3.2 Display students results

Those were the first System Requirements. There has been slight modifications regarding those requirements during implementation. There are delays, enhancements, and more work to be done.

Customized Solution

2007-11-26T12:19:00.000-08:00

I have always been confused what the idea: Make a Product and Deliver a Solution means. I have considered products; as moodle for example, a product. It is available for download, easy to install, customizable, and open source. What a product !! Every time I hear the word: Product, I connect it to an the moodle, and say "Well! I do not think I can provide a product like that, may be not now; I need time :) " But, when Prof. Dr.Alaa talked to Dr.Ahmed Hassan about passing the product the latter uses to asses Students in the Faculty, the latter mentioned something about purchasing the product after trial and stuff like that. I rethought about the concepts I am misunderstanding. I do not need to provide a product that contains all moodle customization features to be good. We started this simple Assessment Management System; internally, hoping it will lead us some where. I think about it as a Customized Solution. This Customized Solution can be further customized based on the situation you will use it for, and it is available. Right, it will need work from guys who made it in the first place, it will need their presence, their help with the installation, but come on; when you need it, you will get it. I am not saying it because I am selling this thing, it is just I wanted to send a message to everyone all over the world. I have been waiting a lot for illusions, many years I have not started achieving a real working system because I believed it has to be like moodle; till I figured out it does not have to be. Take my advice; and if you are a programmer, you shall start thinking about real system to implement, real life scenario/situation to automate. You will feel ultimate happiness.

I am thinking about Customization all the way through this experience. I might not provide it from the early beginning, but I believe there are customization that Assessment Management Systems shall provide; like:

You can manage how many assessments you want for each course, provide dates, periods of times, times for each assessment, question types, and difficulty level.
Assessment Management System shall be able to differentiate between different Assessment levels. Assessments shall not be too easy or too hard. Assessment Management System shall include a predefined number of different questions' classes.
More than one question formats are available for online assessments. Assessment Management Systems provide Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) and True/False ones because they are so simple to mark, can be fully automated. I prefer thinking about Match Questions, Fill in the Blanks, as available for Assessment Management Systems. Essay questions are important, Assessment Management Systems can provide this option, tools and techniques to help instructor marks those questions, but to automate essay questions, I do not believe in that.
MCQs need to be customized. Not all MCQs utilize four choices only, you can use five or more. You can set this up also.
A Service Layer shall be provided over the database and the application, so Assessment Management System can be integrated with other systems.
Mobile Assessment is one of the options that Assessment Management Systems shall provide. And that takes us; again to the difference between assessment and exam. Students can take assessments via mobiles, but not exams. I prefer adding the required two services over the application; so the solution is available for mobile plug-in upon request.

If you came out to more customization ideas, please do not hesitate to drop a comment, or mail me directly. I am really interested in this topic.

The Start

2007-11-26T06:49:00.000-08:00

The whole thing came up with the sentence: "We want to provide an online Exam System for our Faculty, I want to have a simple Web page that generates random number of questions, marks them immediately, so we do not have to collect papers and go through the effort of ordinary exams." I replied "Great, I think we can do such a thing", but I had many things to say:

I refused the idea of having students take Mid-Term exams from homes. I accept their taking of Assessments, but Exams NO Way. Any student can giver her/his ID and Password to her/his college, making her/him get the task done. Besides, we still face situations where you can find students without the internet access [i]. I need to have the student at my sight, knowing that s/he is whom s/he claims to be. Besides, need o know that s/he does not use all the available resources her/his hands can reach. This is not an Open Book Exam. I suggested we will have this exam at our laboratories, so we can manage the whole process.
I refused the idea of pushing a students with a timer in the web page. I preferred to leave the time control matter to us; Exam Supervisors, to provide more flexibility of this process. We might face a situation where students find their KeyBoard or Mouse not working, we might face the situation where the PC stops responding, and stuff like that [ii].
I did not mind giving the student the capability to submit the entire form as: Empty. Do you really mind? Do you think I have to force the student answering the Assessment; even when s/he does not want to ?? Actually, I do not think so. S/he has the right to submit an empty form, so what ;)
I put in mind the situation I will face so soon; where almost all my teachers will ask me to provide the same experience, so I tried my best to manage that.
The Assessment format was agreed upon in advance, to be: A Single Web page that displays Five MCQs and Five True/False questions. So, the total number of questions will be (Ten) with one mark for each question; that makes the final mark out of 10. I refused the idea of generating controls and assessment pages dynamically. I prepared templates to be filled dynamically with the suitable questions, based on the Assessment ID. Assessment ID is based on Courses [iii].
The main decision was: This experience is a start. I hope it will work well, so we can proceed developing, enhancing this system, and think seriously about presenting similar solutions to enhance our Faculty life.

Thank You

--
[i] Though it does not make any sense to any of us to hear the sentence "I do not have the PC here with me, I have it home" OR "I can not access the internet"; this is not acceptable due to the enormous amount of Technology Centers provided by the Ministry of Communications; those are free by the way, and the uncountable number of Cyber Cafes, but what I shall do when I hear this. Actually, nothing.

[ii] In normal situations, we shall not worry about events like that, unfortunately this is not the case at our Faculty, so, I decided to leave the timing open.

[iii] Database details are available under Database Label

Introduction

2007-11-24T15:23:00.000-08:00

Welcome to

Assessment Management System: Mans-FCI Experience

Blog

This blog starts two days after the Beta unleash of : http://www.m-assessment.info. This site has a story. In the graduation Projects of Mansoura-FCI Year 2006/2007, I was supervising one of the graduation projects. I suggested the topic: Mobile Learning, and it was highly welcomed by the group members. They suggested the Mobile Assessment, because it is an important topic that affects Learning Process, and assessment is one of the learning activities that can be achieved via mobile devices. I liked the idea, and we started working the project. I was about to sign a contract with SMS service provider company in Egypt, when they told me that I have to have a dedicated IP address, so they can push SMS I receive to that server. I reserved the Domain Name: M-Assessment; stands for: Mobile Assessment, and we started building the required application.

Unfortunatly, we faced a programmatical situation where we had to handle via programmatic solution that does not meet Web servers security level. Without mentioning lots of details, we were not able to run the application in real life scenario due to technical difficulties. I still have M-Assessment, without activiating it. I even thought about dropping the domain, and letting this dream goes; just like any dream I let go before.

But, I found out the Faculty need for a system that provides assessments for students; those assessments can advance to be mid-term exams. This system will help the faculty overcome many limitations, and help Teaching Assistants, and Doctors greatly too.

Then, it was the idea to turn M-Assessment from Mobile Assessment TO Mansoura Assessment. It turned to be: Mansoura Faculty of Computers and Information Systems Assessment Experience. I am not telling lies or unbelivable stories in this blog, but I thought about documenting the unleash, establishment, and system details, so it might be used later to develop the system. It took me 25 hours to build the first two pages of the system, and this is only the start. Our Assessment Management System is still an infant, that needs lots of efforts to fit our requirements, and I promise you: We will not stop. I needed the chance to give this Faculty a worth product, and Thanks to God, I have found the Chance.

This site will not include Coding Details; not because Codes are secrets; I love to share code, but becuase I focus on Analysis, Design, Algorithms, and Features.

Again, this blog tends to provide our experience, activities, and system details in a way that can not be available on the Web site.

Thank You