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Computer-based Test Software System: A Review and New Features

Article  in  International Journal of Computer Applications · October 2012

DOI: 10.5120/8828-2930

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 55– No.15, October 2012

Computer-based Test Software System:

A Review and New Features
Bajeh Amos Orenyi Mustapha Mutairu Omotosho
Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Department of Computer Science, Faculty of
Communication & Information Sciences, University Communication & Information Sciences, University
of Ilorin, Nigeria of Ilorin, Nigeria

ABSTRACT Systems. The benefits of these systems over the

Computer Based Test System also referred to as e- traditional/conventional method of examination cannot be
examinations System, is a software that can be used to over emphasised: it involves the conduct of examinations
conduct examinations through the internet or in an intranet for using computer networks, and questions are set in such a way
a remote or in-house candidates. This paper identify the need that they can be formally and easily processed by the
for improving the current CBT software systems employed by computer [2]. This reduces the enormous workload on
tertiary institutions. The proposed features for improving the examiners in manually marking, grading and reviewing
reviewed systems includes state persistency (in order to examinations. Several studies had been conducted on e-
prevent data loss in case of any interruption or disruptions that examination system, but none so far (to the best our
may occur during examinations) and Question Categorization knowledge at the time of writting this paper) was developed
(in order to fairly evaluate candidates by posing questions with the features of state persistency, question categorization
with overall equal strength to each and every candidate taking and the new question type identified and designed in this
an examination). paper.

This paper detailed the requirements, design and 2. REVIEW OF CURRENT SYSTEMS
implementation of the proposed for the improvement of the The reviewed systems were the Computer Based Test Systems
CBT systems. The implementation of the system was done by used by some of the top most tertiary institutions in Nigeria,
the use of C# programming language, SQL Serever 2005 which model the general conventional CBT system.
express edition, Visual studio 2008 express edition as the
IDE. The acceptability of the proposed system was evaluated As Ayo C.K. et al [3] stated, these systems can be considered
by conducting a survey to sample opinions of users on the as a 3-tier architectures systems, comprising the
improvements in the proposed CBT system. View/Presentation tier, the business-logic tier and the
database/Backend tier. The view/presentation tier offers an
General Terms interface to the user, it is the gateway for users to access the
Software Systems, Algorithm, Enterprise Application information retrieved from the backend (i.e. the database) on
Development. the system. The business-logic tier serves as the middleware
that is responsible for processing the user’s requests, it can
Keywords also be regarded as the engine room of the application that is
responsible for the overall functionality of the system. The
Computer Based Test (CBT), Question Categorization, State database/bankend tier serves as the repository of all the data
Persistency, e-examination, 3-tier architecture required for the operation of the system including but not
limited to users data, examination questions, etc.
1. INTRODUCTION
In Educational institutions the evaluation of performance of Below is a high level algorithm (in flowchart form)
student is done through Examinations which is one of the representing the general architecture of the CBT systems used
most important components of educational systems or by the tertiary institutions and reviewed in this work.
institutions. The regularity and integrity in conducting
examinations is one of the parameters for measuring the
standard and efficiency of an educational institution. The
examination system is improved by the computerization of the
various examination activities [1].
Tertiary institutions and examination bodies adopt the use of
various types of Computer Based Test (CBT) Software

1
 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 55– No.15, October 2012

Start

Username and
Password For
Authentication

Display
Eligible No
Message

Yes

Random
Database Generation of
Question Set

No
Display
Questions

Is Exam Submit Or Time

Elapsed?

Yes

Compute Result

Database Save Result To Database

End

Fig 1: Architecture of the reviewed systems.

2
 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 55– No.15, October 2012

The following are the proposed features, which are not in the examiner will specify the number of questions to be answered
reviewed systems, that the CBT systems should have in order from each question category. The sum of the number of
to improve them: questions from each category will be the total number of
questions each candidate will attempt/answer. Questions of
1) Questions categorisation : This ensures fairness in the same category will have equal strength and candidates will
the distributuion of questions to candidates and also ensures answer equal number of questions from each and every
overall equality in the strength of questions answered by category. This brings in fairness to all candidates by testing or
candidates. examining each of them on the same equal number of
2) State persistency: This prevents data loss from any questions and most importantly questions with equal strength.
situation that may arise. In other words, this eliminate the chances of some candidates
getting to answer some questions that are harder or simpler
3) Addition of another exam type modules : Addition than what some other candidates get even though they are all
of the response type question greatly increase the flexibility of to be evaluated on the same scale.
the system.
The pseudocode to implement Categorization of Questions is:
A preliminary evaluation of the acceptability of the proposed
features for the CBT software systems was conducted to know Step 1: Set the category name and the number of categories
how strong the users are likely to move towards the and store it in the database
development of the new system with its introduced features Step 2: For the number of categories specified above, enter
(i.e. state persistency and question categorization). Analysis the category identifier, the category score (that will be used
of the questionnaires that were distributed are as follows. for each question) and the number of questions to be answered
Table 1: Result of Survey from the category.

Total Number Of 500 Step 3: For each of the question set, pick any of the
Questionnaires Distributed categoryDetail set in Step 2.

Number of Recieved 395 2) State Persistency : This is a concept that enables the
Questionnaires session (i.e the state) of every user of the proposed system to
be saved at a particular interval, thus enabling the ability to
Number of people that 327 resume the saved state after restoration from any interruption
want the State Persistency that might have occured during the course of conducting the
examination. The state persistency have several advantages,
Number of people that 382
but one of the most important of this is the application of it to
want Question
handle the issue of power interruption which always cause the
Categorization
examination process to be restarted.
Most Reasons For Because of electricity
The Pseudocode to implement State Persistency is:
Accepting State Persistency interuption and hardware
failure Step 1: Check for validity of the login credential presented by
student, If valid Proceed to Step 2 else END.
Most Reasons for For Fairness Purpose
Accepting Question Step 2: Check whether the student is logging-in for the first
Categorization time for the examination under consideration. If yes, step 4
otherwise step 3
Most Reasons for Rejecting Believe that the exam will be
State Persistency restarted and hence giving Step 3: Load and Unserialize the student’s data from the file,
them another set of cheap Load questions from the file and proceed to step 5.
questions
Step 4: Create a file and name it with the student’s ID, Load
Most Reasons for Rejecting Not Believing in its fresh questions for the student, serialize the students object
Question Categorizations effectiveness and save it in the file.
Step 5: Start Exam and as the students navigate through the
question, serialize the current states and save to the file.
3. DESIGN OF THE PROPOSED Step 6: If the exam is submitted successfully, then delete the
SYSTEM file and END else go to step 1.
The proposed system is the implementation of the new
features identified in section 2 and the existing features in the 3) Addition of Response Type Question : This is the
current systems. The new features and their designs are type of question that requires students to supply textual
discussed below. answer by typing from the keyboard rather than selecting
from available options (say a, b, c, d or e). This type of
1) Questions categorization: This enable the examiner question requires strict and consistent response from
to set categories for the questions of the exam based on the candidates as it does not allows for guessing unlike the
strength of each question. It is certain that all the questions in multiple choice questions.
an examination do not have the same strength – some
questions are harder to solve or requires more time than some Below is the Archtecture of the proposed system.
other question in the same examination. Questions
categorization will place questions with the same strength into
the same category. This implies that all questions in the
database for a particular exam will belong to one out of the
specified number of question categories for that exam. The

3
 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 55– No.15, October 2012

Start
To check Whether
the logged in
student is
currently writting Username And
exam and there Password For
was an Authentication
interruption.

Display
Eligible? No Error
Message

Yes

Is There Saved Sate Stop

Yes
For this Student?

No Get The Saved State

Get Question
Database
Categories
Get Questions and
Time Left From The
Saved State
Generate Questions
Database Based On The
Categories Obtained

While There Is Time and

Compute Result No
Not Submit

Yes

Save Result to Save Student’s State

Database

End
Display Question

Fig 2: Architecture of the Proposed system.

4
 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 55– No.15, October 2012

4. IMPLEMENTATION Table 2 enlists the question types that will be taking on the
Due to the dynamic nature of programming, there are several proposed system.
ways that can be used to implement the concepts discussed Table 2: Question Types
above.
S/N QUESTION HTML FORM COMMENTS
The implementation of the Question Categorization feature TYPE TYPE
was done by separating the process of setting questions on the
CBT system into a separate module and implemented the 1 Multiple choice Radio Buttons One correct
module as separate software we called Question Setter. The questions [many from many
following are the functions that can be carried out on the options (4)] options [one
Question Setter software: answer
excludes others]
 Setting Up of the Examination (i.e. the exam
details). 2 True/false Radio Buttons True/false [one
questions[2 answer
 Setting the Question’s Categories for the options] excludes others]
examination.
3 Multiple correct Checkboxes Questions with
 Setting Questions for the examination and . questions many correct or
 Generation of questions file for the Computer wrong options
Based Test System. [one answer
does not
The State Persistency feature was implemented using exclude others]
Serialization and Deserialization:
4 Supply Type Textboxes Question that
Serialization is the process of creating data format that can be Questions requires answer
stored into any medium of storage or transmitted across a to be typed.
network connection from an object or a data structure. Each
programming language has its own way of implementing this
concept. It allows an object to be converted into a format that
can be re-used over a period of time [4]. A serialized object 5. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
(i.e. the resultant object of serialization) can be processed to The main features for improvement identified in the current
create a semantically identical clone of the original object CBT System and their implementation were discussed. It is
through the opposite process known as deserialization. pertinent to state that the implementation of these new
features on the current system will go a long way in
The State persistency was simply implemented by serializing increasing the fairness, credibility, applicability of the CBT
the students object which holds all the student’s Questions, system. Real time evaluation of the operational performance
the answers, the time left to complete the examination, the of the implemented features and comparative study will be
current question’s number been answered by the student and carried out as future work.
the student’s personal details. This serialized data will be
saved in a file with the student ID as the file name. When a 6. REFERENCES
student is logged in, the system will identify the student’s file [1] Yuan, Z. Zhang, L and Zhang, G. (2003) A Novel Web-
(if there is one) and load the student’s data from the file. If the Based Examination System For Computer Science
loading of the data is successful, then the data in the file will Education. 33rd ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education
be deserialized to the student’s object and the examination Conference.S3f-7-s3f-10.
will continue from the state which the student was before the
[2] Stina, B. Micheal, T. Stephen, G. and Roberto, T. (2000)
interruption occured. But if the loading of the file is not
PILOT: An Interactive Tool for Learning and Grading,
successful, then new questions will be loaded from the
SIGCSEB; SIGCSCE Bulletin, 2000.
database and as the student proceed in answering the
questions, the state (i.e. data) will be saved at an interval. If [3] Ayo, CK Akinyemi, IO Adebiyi, AA & Ekong, U O
the examination is submitted by the student or the time 2007, “The prospects of e-examination implementation
elapses, result will be computed and saved into the database. in Nigeria”, Turkish Online Journal of Distance
The file containing the student’s state will be deleted. Education, vol. 8, no 4, pp. 125-134.
All major programming languages provide inbuilt libraries for [4] Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serialization
implementing serialization. We used C#.NET to implement visited on 23rd of September 2011.
this concept of serialization [5].
[5] Microsoft developer network, msdn 2008 version.
Lastly, the implementation of response type question on the
propsed system was done by setting question and specify a
specific, non ambiguous and consistent answer for the
question, this will be saved in the database. Candidates are
also expected to type this answer specifically as it was saved
in the database. This will not only increase the type of
questions that can be answered on the CBT system but also
ensure that the students really understand the question rather
than just picking from available options.

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