Aweb-Based Question Bank Management Information System
Aweb-Based Question Bank Management Information System
Aweb-Based Question Bank Management Information System
ISSN 1549-3636
© 2009 Science Publications
Abstract: Problem statement: This study described the analysis, design and implementation of the
Questions-Bank system that allows the students of primary, preparatory and secondary schools to take
web-based quizzes and exams, to download course reviews and previous exams. "Questions-Bank",
means that each question has a weight and area of knowledge deals with it. The system facilitated
generation of automatic, balanced and different exam sheets, that containing different types of
questions, covering the entire curriculum and displaying gradually from easiness to difficulty. The
exam sheet produced by the system, takes into account the different levels of the students from
excellent, good, to fair and avoids any mistakes of language and non-clear terminologies. Approach:
We had used the V-model to develop the system, this model started by specifying the system
requirements, analyzed and classified the requirements into functional and nonfunctional requirements,
constructed the use cases and domain model, the system design was started by determining the
database tables and appropriate interfaces and finally, the implementation phase was launched by
implementing the functionalities of the system. Results: Our system was used successfully in distance
learning as well as in self-training. We have tested the system with different type of courses taught in
the schools, ranged from primary to secondary levels. The feedbacks of both teachers and students
were highly promising. Conclusion: Implementing this system will allow the schools to create a
Questions-Bank database. The system allowed the school 'students to take quizzes, free exercises and
exams, to download course reviews and previous exams.
Key words: E-Learning, educational systems, web-based evaluation systems, interactive applications
Exams generation: Teachers can store many types of The administrator application: This application
questions like multiple choices, true/false and fill in the provides the school administrator with simple tools to
blanks. The system uses an intelligent algorithm to manage the information of the Questions-Bank system.
generate balanced exam sheet, that containing different The following are some features provided by the
types of questions, covering the entire curriculum and administrator application:
displaying gradually from easiness to difficulty.
• Activate/Inactivate the system
Exam grading: quizzes and exams can be marked • Import and Export the questions-bank database
automatically by the system. Thus, students can get • Send automatic email immediately containing the
instantly their marks in a given quiz immediately after new password whenever the user changes his/her
submitting their responses and see also the corrected password
answers.
• Administer the basic information of the system
Communication: The system has a communication such as: Levels data, subjects or courses data,
tool that allows students and teachers to interact classes' data, teacher's data and students' data
together and discuss their activities.
The teacher application: This application provides the
Course management: The system is highly flexible teachers with various tools to construct the system
and doesn’t necessitate any programming skills from its services. The following are some features provided by
potential users. Thus, teachers can add, delete and the teacher application:
update their course materials at any moment through
the web. • Change account password
• Manage (add, update, delete and display) all the
Questions-Bank database: The system allows the
system services (reviews, exam questions, quizzes,
schools to create a Questions-Bank database that stores
previous exams and model answers)
the previous exams, the model answers, the reviews and
useful exercises for each course.
The student application: This application provides the
MATERIALS AND METHODS students with interactive tools to use the services of the
system. The following are some features provided by
System overview: The system interface is entirely the student application:
web-based and doesn’t necessitate any technical skills
from the potential users. The system is divided into • Change account password
three applications, called administrator, teacher and • Download assignments, revision documents,
student application. As shown in Fig. 1, the system is previous exams and other files that are uploaded by
appropriate for on-campus teaching, with access to the the teachers
Internet, or off-campus teaching using the local • Take web-based quizzes, exams, assignments,
network. interactive tutorials and reviews
and associating them together. Our adopted software Use-cases: A use-case describes the interaction
development process is the V-model, as shown in between the users of the system and the system itself
Fig. 2, which can be presumed to be the extension of through a sequence of simple steps that show how the
the Waterfall model[9]. Instead of moving down in a system responds to a request from a certain user. It is
linear way, the process steps are bent upwards after the mainly used to capture the functional requirements of
implementation phase, to form the typical V shape. In the system. Use cases must be written in a language that
the development of the Questions-Bank system, the V- is understandable by clients. They must describe the
model was followed by: events from the point of view of the users.
• Specifying the system requirements using different Initial UML interaction diagrams: An interaction
gathering approaches diagram demonstrates a certain aspect of a system by
• The requirements were analyzed and classified into modeling its behavior. It is used to visualize the
functional and nonfunctional requirements and use collaboration among several objects to complete a
cases and domain model were constructed certain task.
• The system design was started by determining the
database tables, appropriate interfaces, class Initial static class diagram: An initial class diagram
diagram: To show a static view of used classes and (also called the domain model) consists of class and
interaction diagrams: To show the collaborations object diagrams. It is a static model that furnishes a
among the objects of the system to complete an visual representation of the real-world concepts that are
action visible to the user not of software components.
• The implementation phase was launched by Elements of a domain model are classes and the
implementing the functionalities of the system relationships between them. It is widely used as a
source of inspiration for designing software objects.
Each of the previously mentioned phases is
associated to a certain phase of testing to verify and to System analysis: The analysis phase is the chief phase
validate that the work is accurately executed, if in which the system requirements are identified in more
problems are found during the verification or validation details. The goal of this phase in the system
phases, then a re-execution of left side of the V is development is to refine the system goals into defined
performed to make fixes and improvements. functions and operation of the intended application.
System requirements are documented in a
complementary set of artifacts: flow charts use case
Methods and techniques to analyze the problem:
diagrams, system sequence diagrams and so on. Each
Scenarios: A scenario is an informal description of
artifact provides a different perspective of the system
actions done by a specific user in order to make a use of
under design and contains distinct requirements. The
the system. It can be considered as an instance of a use
combination of these perspectives establishes the tasks
case. It is expressed as a story of how a user can access
that are to be accomplished by the system.
the system.
Available information gathering technique: It’s
difficult to build a solution if we don’t know the
requirements. The “elicitation” step is where the
requirements are first gathered from the client. Many
techniques are available for gathering requirements.
Each has a value in certain circumstances and in many
cases, we need multiple techniques to gain a complete
picture from a diverse set of clients and stakeholders.
Here is a look at some of the approaches that could be
taken.
• Gather facts, opinions and speculations • Questions-Bank system allows the school
• Ask about specific details administrator to:
• Ask for other sources of information • Login (as administrator)
• Ask about the stakeholders’ vision for the future • Change account password
• Ask if they have alternative ideas • Get new password instead of the lost one
• Ask them to draw diagrams • Activate/Inactivate the system
• Renew data (Import the data from the Excel
Prototyping: Prototyping is a relatively modern file to the SQL server database, delete data
technique for gathering requirements. In this approach, from specific table)
we gather preliminary requirements that we use to build • Send an email immediately containing the new
an initial version of the solution. We show this to the password whenever the user changes his/her
client, who then gives us additional requirements. We password
change the application and cycle around with the client • Manage (add, update, delete and display) the
again. This repetitive process continues until the basic information of the system
product meets the critical mass of business needs or for
an agreed number of iterations. • Questions-Bank system allows the teacher to:
• Login (as teacher)
Use case: Use cases are basically stories that describe • Change account password
how discrete processes work. The stories include people • Manage (add, update, delete and display) all
(users) and describe how the solution works from a user the system services (reviews, exam questions,
perspective. Use cases may be easier for the users to quizzes and previous exams with their model
articulate, although the use cases may need to be answers)
distilled later into the more specific detailed
requirements. At this stage, client requirements are • Questions-Bank system allows the student to:
gathered. This is done on the basis of information • Login (as student)
provided by the client in the form of documents. • Change account password
Requirements could be classified in two types: • Get new password instead of the lost one
Functional and Non-Functional requirements. • Download assignments, revision documents,
System specification: previous exams and other files that are
Functional requirements: Describe the interactions uploaded by the teachers
between the system and its environment independent of • Take web-based quizzes, exams, assignments
its implementation. The environment includes the end and interactive tutorials
user and any other external system with which the
system interacts. Non-functional requirements: Describe aspects of the
The Questions-Bank system should allow different system that are not directly related to the functional
types of users to interact with the system according to behavior of the system. Non-functional requirements
given privileges. There are three main users, as shown include a broad variety of the requirements such as
in Fig. 3, school administrator, teacher and student. It implementation requirements, interface requirements,
provides various services for each one: operation requirements and others.
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Quiz generation algorithm: The DBMS of the accordingly. As a result, some of the feedbacks of the
"Questions-Bank" system includes an innovative and students in a given course are used to adjust the level of
intelligent algorithm for managing the difficulty of the the questions. The following are the methods of our
quiz questions[2]. The algorithm uses the difficulty algorithm:
attribute set by the user as input parameter. . The
teachers set the difficulty levels of their questions at • Get_Difficulty(): This method determines the
creation phase using a numbering system. The value difficulty of a specific question
assigned to a specific question identifies how difficult • Calc_Margn(): This method calculates the lower
(or easy) it would be for a student to reply correctly to
and the upper bounds of error percentage in the
the question. Our algorithm can generate automatically
students’ responses
different quizzes with different levels of difficulties.
• Calc_Error(): This method calculates the
Obviously, teachers are not always as accurate as would
be desirable in estimating the difficulty of a question percentage of wrong responses to a question, as a
(as they don’t know the exact level of the students using ratio between errors and a constant value named
the system) our algorithm can update the difficulty and Max_Num_Access. The involved variables are
the easiness of the questions based on the responses reset after each difficulty evaluation
given by the students. The algorithm has the ability to • Mark_Ques(): This method activates a Boolean
detect the difficulty/easiness of a question based on field in the register of a question if the difficulty
students reply and adjust the difficulty value level reaches the thresholds
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Algorithm: ManageQuestion (Difficulty): During the development of the system, data for the
testing of different functionalities was needed to be
1. Access random question from the "questions" imported into the database tables. The tables in the
database table. database are filled using two different ways .The first
2. Check the Max_Num_Access of the question way is to fill the tables by importing the data from an
Get_Difficulty(); Calc_Margn(); MS Excel sheet that contains the basic data from the
Calc_Error(); school's database. The second way is done during the
3. Recalculate_Difficulty(); run time of the system.
4. if (Error < LowerBound) then
System requirements implementation: To prove the
Difficulty--;
functionality of the "Questions-Bank" system, we have
else if (Error > UpperBound) then
implemented several web-based applications as
Difficulty++;
components of the system. The Questions-Bank system
5. if Difficulty is out-of-bounds then
is divided into three sub-systems, as shown in Fig. 6,
Mark_Ques();
the administrator, the teacher and the student sub-
system.
RESULTS
The administrator sub-system: This sub-system
System implementation: The web-based "Questions- provides the school administrator with web-based
Bank" system takes the advantage of the latest services to manage the information of the Questions-
development technologies in its implementation. It is an Bank system. The following are some services provided
ASP.NET web application to be used on the Internet by the administrator sub-system:
and was written using Microsoft’s Visual Studio .NET
development environment in the C# programming Login: Before users are granted access to the
language. Code that executes on the server to process "Questions-Bank" system, they must successfully login
event handlers for events such as button clicks is to the system. The user’s accounts are associated with
written in C#. Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 is used for different levels of privileges. Username and password is
database operations, including the storage and retrieval the most common authentication method, used to access
of login information. Successfully logging into the the system, as shown in Fig. 7. Login information is
system, users are taken to an action page that verified by comparing the entered username and
dynamically presents options to them based on their password with the stored ones in the database. The
privileges. authentication program on the Web server opens a
database connection and retrieves the user record.
Database implementation: The database is designed to If the user input data matches a database record,
have the following main tables: Level, Subject, the user is granted to access the system services.
ReviewFile, Quiz, ExamFiles, Questions, StudentScore, Otherwise, an “invalid login” message is displayed and
Student, Teacher and Administrator. the login page is displayed again.
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Fig. 11: Quiz administration (add new quiz) The student sub-system: This sub-system allows the
student to download reviews, to download the previous
Previous exams administration: Teacher can use this exams and their model answers and to take selected
services to upload (add) the previous exams and their quizzes. In addition to the login and change password,
model answers for each subject, as shown in Fig. 10. the following services are available in the student sub-
Also teacher can delete specific exam(s) from the system:
database and can display the stored exams.
The teacher can store the following data for each Download reviews: Student can use this service to
previous exam: Level name, subject name, exam type download the reviews files for his/her subjects, as
(midterm, final), exam title, exam date, exam file and shown in Fig. 12. The student select the subject name
the exam answer file (if exist). and the teacher name (as input) from the available list
of values, the system search for the required query and
Exam administration: Teachers can use this on-line displays all the stored reviews from the database,
tool to add, update and delete questions and answers for Fig. 13, shows the implementation of the "Review-
their exams and quizzes. The questions are inserted into algorithm", that used for this service.
the database dynamically, so new questions can be
added during the configuration of a exam or quiz, as Download previous exams: Student can use this
shown in Fig. 11. service to download previous exams and their model
The teacher can store the following data for each answers for his/her subjects, as shown in Fig. 14. The
exam/quiz: level name, subject name, chapter number, student select the subject name and the teacher name
lesson number, quiz title, quiz type (multiple choices, (as input) from the available list of values, the system
true or false, fill in the blank), question text, question search for the required query and displays all the stored
image file, choice1, choice2, choice3, choice4, correct exams from the database.
answer, question weight, question score and question
explanation. On-line quiz: After a student login into the system
from the student login page, he/she can select the quiz,
Print students scores: Teacher can use this tool to where the questions will be selected randomly by our
print the grade reports for the students who took the algorithm from the database. Our system covers many
web-based quizzes (exams) proposed by the system, as types of questions as mentioned before, such as:
shown in Fig. 16. multiple choices, True/False and fill in the blank.
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DISCUSSION
Table 2: Quiz results of the two groups of students Today, Mobile learning (M-learning) can use a
Student Groups Passed Percentage collection of tools that tutors and developers can
A-paper quiz and review 22 73.33 combine to deliver their teaching resources.
B-computer quiz and review 25 83.33
We intend to improve our research work, that
introduced in[11], by implementing the prototype
Table 3: Results of the Questionnaires of both Groups
Group A (%) Group B (%)
"Mobile Questions-Bank" system (MQB), that provides
Do you trust the on-line evaluation system? the students to take wireless quizzes, wireless reviews
Yes 65 90 and wireless exams.
No 35 10 In order to develop the MQB system, three mobile
When do you prefer to be told your quiz score? technologies will be evaluated to use:
At the end 80 95
Later 20 5
How would you describe the process of entering answers in the Short Messaging Service (SMS): The questions could
computer? be sent to students via SMS messages, after which the
Easy - 75
Acceptable - 22 students could reply with the answers via SMS
Difficult - 3 messages. This approach is susceptible to delays
Very difficult - - because delivery times of SMS messages may vary
How do you feel your result would have been, if the quiz had been on greatly. When responding to a stream of questions,
paper as the traditional way?
Worse - 25 there is possibility of the SMS messages being
Same - 40 duplicated or delivered out of sequence, causing errors
Better - 5 in scoring.
Do not know - 30
How do you feel your result would have been, if the quiz had been by
the on-line system (i.e., computer-based)? Wireless Application Protocol (WAP): The questions
Worse 40 - could be displayed in the student’s mobile phone as a
Same 30 - very simple Internet web page based on the WAP
Better 20 -
Do not know 10 - format. The student could then select the response using
the mobile phones navigation keys. The questions and
The results of question 5 indicate that, a large percentage answers would be transmitted using GPRS (General
of students who did not use the computer-based system Packet Radio Service) or 3G (3rd. Generation) mobile
felt that their marks would have been worse if a data networks. However WAP generally offers an
computer had been used. Similarly, question 4 shows that unfriendly user interface that may be confusing to
a percentage of student using computers felt that they students. When the mobile data transmission breaks due
might have done better using traditional methods. to network issues, it is not possible to recover from the
Finally, the majority of the students trust more a error and show the student a helpful message.
computer-based evaluation system than classical
methods. Some students did comment on the absence of Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) and eXtensible
printed copies of their answers and the fact that they Markup Language (XML): The student could
could not compare their answers with the correct results download and install a small J2ME application that
after the quiz. would interact with the server over the GPRS and 3G
mobile data networks, accessing XML questions file
CONCLUSION and transmitting responses as XML answer file to the
server. Unlike WAP, J2ME applications have full
This study described the analysis, design and
control over the mobile phone screen to ensure that the
implementation of the Questions-Bank system that
application looks and operates the same on any mobile
allows the students to take web-based quizzes and
phone. J2ME applications also have full control over
exams, to download course reviews and previous
the data transmission and can retransmit the data in case
exams. The system facilitated generation of automatic,
of error.
balanced and different exam sheets, that containing
different types of questions, covering the entire
curriculum and displaying gradually from easiness to ACKNOWLEDGMENT
difficulty. The system allows the schools to create a
Questions-Bank database that stores the exams The researchers acknowledge the financial support
questions, the previous exams, the model answers, the (Qatar National Research Fund- UREP 4-2-3) received
reviews and useful exercises for each course. from Qatar Foundation, via Qatar University, Qatar.
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