A computer based assessment system for undergraduate electrical engineering modules

Good assessment is an essential component of good learning. Marking test and exam papers for large classes is however a time-consuming and repetitive task. This paper reports on the design and implementation of a computer based assessment (CBA) system suitable for undergraduate engineering modules. This prototype CBA system is capable of automatically grading relatively open-ended analysis and design problems and is also relatively user friendly. This CBA system consists of two separate subsystems, namely a test delivery subsystem and an automatic grading subsystem (which is the contribution of this paper). Automatic grading of the student answer papers is performed in Matlab . The grading subsystem can automatically grade typed student answers containing symbolic mathematical expressions as well as numeric answers. Grading is performed accurately, consistently and very fast compared to a human lecturer. Students are given partial credit for partially correct answers and feedback is given in a very intuitive form quite close to the traditional manner in a pen-and-paper test. The system has been successfully used to take final exams in a second year engineering module on basic circuit analysis