teachers' course materials, as well as a homework database. ... The free form marking is already a feature available in Adobe Acrobat for PDF documents.
ISBN: 978-972-8924-42-3 © 2007 IADIS
A FRAMEWORK FOR AN EXPRESSIVE AUTOMATED HOMEWORK GRADING SYSTEM Sanja Lazarova-Molnar United Arab Emirates University P.O. Box 17555, Al Ain, UAE
ABSTRACT It is always an annoyance when students’ homework has to be corrected and graded. However, the feedback is very important. For this purpose many teachers return to the good old trusted method, i.e. correct the homework on paper and hand in to the students. In the case of e-learning environments grading usually means printing the homework, correcting it, and handing it to the students. The alternative is to save the homework under a meaningful name, look at it on the computer and grade it, this time without feedback. The only feedback for the student is the online-published grade. One important part of the learning process is skipped. We propose a concept for an automated homework grading which would be enhanced by supporting freeform comments by teachers. Both students and teachers would benefit from this enhancement. Students would get the valuable teacher’s feedback on their homework solutions, and teachers would save the time spent on “secretarial” tasks and would be supported in their own way of expression. KEYWORDS Homework grading, freeform, information system, editing, automation, web-based.
1. INTRODUCTION Homework is an important and integral part of the learning process for university students. Teacher’s feedback is one of homework’s most valued elements. The students need the feedback as they learn from it and get a critical assessment of the quality of their studying. In order to increase the effectiveness of the feedback, teachers should be supported by means of information technology to provide it in free form, which would include sketching, drawing and scribbling. This in turn would speed up the process of grading homework, as well as assist the expressiveness. Sketching and scribbling have been both established as powerful communication media. Usually, the existing e-learning environments enable web-based communication between students and teachers. Yet, one has to spend a lot of time uploading and downloading documents, as well as inventing descriptive names for the files and folders where they would be stored. Also, very often students do not follow naming conventions, which can only add to the headache. The existing approaches to automation of the homework grading process (such as WebAssign (http://webassign.net/info/) which is commercially available, and OWL (http://ccbit.cs.umass.edu/owl/) which is developed at University of Massachusetts) are mainly based on multiple choice and similar types of questions, and propose computerized grading without involvement of the teacher. We disagree with this concept, as we think that the teacher should be involved in the grading process and should supply the students with his/her comments, at least for a part of the homework. (Reeves, T. C., 2000) conveys that there are conflicts amid the utilization of e-learning and meeting higher order educational goals such as assessing deep understanding and active use of knowledge in complex and realistic contents. In addition, (Kirkwood, A. and Price L., 2005) report results from large-scale surveys are reported, and the conclusion is that information technology (IT) alone cannot ensure effective and appropriate learning outcomes, but it has to be guided by educational purpose and pedagogy. This means that teacher’s involvement in all IT-supported processes is extremely important.
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In this paper we describe our idea of a web-based information system, which would support the e-learning process by enabling automated homework grading with enhanced expressiveness. We believe that both the students and the teachers can benefit greatly from such an application.
2. THE CONCEPT OF THE EXPRESSIVE AUTOMATED HOMEWORK GRADING The concept of automated homework grading already exists and has been successfully applied, which is also shown in the case study made by (Bonham, S. et al 2001). In the following we present our idea of an enhanced automated homework grading system, which would support the expressiveness and can be turned into an integral part of the e-learning communities.
2.1 The General Idea The expressive automated homework grading is intended as a part of a broader e-learning information system. For simplification purposes, we ignore administration trivia. The system would serve two types of users, i.e. students and teachers. Both users will have client software installed which will communicate with the database server. Each student and each teacher have unique identification numbers. In Figure 1, the context diagram of the suggested information system is shown. Both students and teachers get notifications whenever there is homework or corrected homework, or solved homework (correspondingly) available online. In those cases, the corresponding data is downloaded as soon as the associated computer is online. Teachers and students need not worry about storing trivia, as this will be managed by a database system.
Figure 1. Context diagram of the Enhanced Automated Homework Grading System
2.2 The Details Behind the General Idea In Figure 2 we demonstrate the more detailed Level 1 Data Flow Diagram (DFD) of the Expressive Automated Homework Grading System. The diagram reflects a more detailed description. The database of the information system contains three types of data besides the administration data, i.e. students’ and teachers’ course materials, as well as a homework database. These are the data stores in the DFD. Through their student-side client program students get notifications that there are homework assignments or corrected homework solutions available, as well as the deadlines associated the assignments. As soon as a student’s computer with client software goes online, the corresponding documents are automatically downloaded. Teachers use the teacher-side client program to prepare homework assignments and communicate with the system to post it online. The assignments are updated in the database as soon as they are marked as completed and teacher’s computer with client software is online. Also, teachers get notifications as soon as a homework solution is available, which is then downloaded on the teacher’s computer as soon as it is online. The homework solutions are stored as images. Teachers use the teacher-side client program to correct the homework using the grading tools that support free-form remarks, from sketching and drawing to typing. Once the correction is defined as complete, it is uploaded to the database and the student is informed about awaiting corrected homework, which is downloaded as soon as student’s computer is online.
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Figure 2. Level 1 Data Flow Diagram of the Automated Homework Grading System
3. FEASABILITY OF THE CONCEPT The concept of the expressive automated homework grading system originated from the necessity of its existence. The idea presented here, when implemented should provide a great support for both teachers and students. It is difficult to speak about the complexity of the implementation, as our idea has not yet achieved that stage. However, we believe that the implementation should not encounter any serious problems. The client programs would work similar to a program that is a combination of an email client and an instant messenger, enhanced by the correction and grading tools. The free form marking is already a feature available in Adobe Acrobat for PDF documents (www.adobe.com). Therefore we see the storing of homework in the PDF format as an option too. The advantage of the PDF format compared to images is that it supports text recognition and editing.
4. SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK The proposed homework grading system will certainly aid both teachers and students, especially those involved in distance education. Based on our university teaching experience at three universities throughout the World, we can clearly state that the non-existence of such a system is a serious drawback in the learning process in the current era of ambition for paperless offices. Therefore, this paper presents an idea of how such a system could work as well as the flows of information which are to be managed.
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The advantages of our concept against the existing ones are that the homework is actually graded by the teacher as opposed to the computer, and it allows essays and similar freeform assignments to be graded as well. We see the system as an enhancement of the student-teacher interaction, which seems to be lacking in the existing e-learning communities and is highly valued by the students (Thorpe M. and Godwin S., 2006), (Freeman M. and Blayney P., 2005). Compared to the traditional on-paper method, besides the paperlessness, the automated homework grading system would be enhanced in that that it can offer fully computerized grading statistics. In the traditional approach, grades need to be entered manually in the computer. Obviously, students are restricted in that that they have to submit electronic copies, which means that they either do their homework on computer or they have to scan their solutions. The computer-typed homework can sometimes take more time, but on the other hand in this modern World that is a skill that everyone should master. Scanning as a back-up option is good to have, however, not everyone has a scanner and again it is a time-consuming process. The system can be particularly useful for computer science students, as they are already used to computer-type their homework. It will be very effective for programming courses, where homework solutions are typically computer-typed by default. In addition, the system could benefit from the use of tablet computers, which would enable teachers to easily correct homework using a tablet pen. Our proposed system can be further extended to cover also tests and exams, and can be certainly enhanced to aid teachers in constructing assignments by providing databases of questions. By using techniques for natural language processing, the system can be even made more intelligent, such as to automatically design questions based on slides, which will be then edited by teachers and used for assignments or exams.
REFERENCES Bonham, S. et al, 2001. Online homework: Does it make a difference? The Physics Teacher, Vol. 39, Part 5, pp. 293-296. Freeman M. and Blayney P., 2005. Promoting interactive in-class learning environments: A comparison of an electronic response system with a traditional alternative. Proceedings of 11th Australasian Teaching Economics Conference, Sydney, Australia, pp. 23-34. Kirkwood, A. and Price L., 2005. Learners and learning in the twenty-first century: what do we know about students' attitudes towards and experiences of information and communication technologies that will help us design courses? Studies in Higher Education, Vol. 30, Issue 3, pp. 257-274. Reeves, T. C., 2000. Alternative Assessment Approaches for Online Learning Environments in Higher Education. Journal of Educational Computing Research, Vol. 23, Num. 1/2000, pp. 101-111. Thorpe M. and Godwin S., 2006. Interaction and e-learning: the student experience. Studies in Continuing Education, Vol. 28, Issue 3, pp. 203-221.
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