GroupBrainstorm-Group:ET
From CS160 User Interfaces Fa06
Contents |
Group Members
Brainstorming Ideas
First Brainstorming Session - 9/13
- List of Ideas
- 01. school applications
- 02. tests creations
- 03. anoto scantron - multiple choices in special boxes
- 04. customized teachers' test
- 05. saving questions for later use - database related
- 06. specify points for every question
- 07. randomize the questions
- 08. cheating prevention/detection using time stamp, paper ID, pen ID
- 09. Signature recognition
- 10. test turning process
- 11. no marks before and after the time is called
- 12. check a box when done to submit wirelessly
- 13. automatic grading
- 14. scantron type - # of correct / # of total questions
- 15. OCR for math applicatons / English applications
- 16. OCR for teachers' grade on top of the page
- 17. hand grading using Anoto pen
- 18. Anoto bluebook
- 19. auto enter the grades into grade book
- 20. database / processing
- 21. storage of marks made by the pens
- 22. storage of scores and user info
- 23. auto curving, difficulty of the questions, time taking for each question
- 24. pivot points on data
- 25. database with combined scores from hand graded and auto graded
- 26. whole school tracking
- 27. every student gets a pen
- 28. every student has a webspace or school opens for all students
- 29. blog style interface
- 30. the webspace has all students work and teachers' feedback
- 31. return tests to students via email or webspace
- 32. parent access to studnet webspace
- 33. various levels of users including admin
- 34. students sharing and public / private data
- 35. passing notes
- 36. archive of past years' data - tests and notes
- 37. attendence - checkouts pen upon arrival, checkout with physical pens
- 38. answer detail - rating scale on each question (optional)
- 39. difficulty of questions (teacher entering)
- 40. time spent on questions - testing analysis
- 41. hall pass in high school
- 42. authenticated by pen, no forging
- 43. art class - replaying artist sketch
- 44. teacher evaluations
- 45. large standarized test
- 46. answers sent to central server
- 47. faster grading / feedback
- 48. no shipping tests around, done electronicly
- 49. student scheduling
- 50. tied to website
- 51. intergraded with teachers' calenders / students' calenders
- 52. share with other students / people
- 53. lab notebooks for students
- 54. add features - MP3, speakers
- 55. taking language tests using Anoto pen
Selected Idea
From the brainstorming session our group had, it was clear that there were two dominant project ideas we had come up with. One was the "Test" preparing and taking project, and the second was to create a website through which students and teachers can submit homeworks, grade homeworks, access records etc. We decided not to implement the website project for a number of factors:
- Each student would need internet access which may not be practical.
- Similar technologies already exist, so the marginal benefit of using the ANOTO pen for submissions did not seem enough.
- The design would depend on students having their own ANOTO pen, which makes it unreliable.
- There is the legal issue of student privacy, since many schools are likely to refuse the posting of student results online, even if login was required to access them.
- A dedicated server would need to be online constantly for the system. This may also be impractical for many schools.
The "Test" project has a definite advantage on each of the above mentioned factors:
- Students will not need to purchase anything, since the ANOTO pens will belong to the school and will be assigned to a student just before the exam.
- We believe this project is a breakthrough in the sense that it will automate tests with the smallest possible transition on behalf of all people involved.
- The teacher/exam administrator has complete access over the material.
- There is no need for a machine to be online, other than during test taking.
In addition, this idea presents many interesting advantages:
- There is no need to train students on new technology.
- Teachers may use their old tests or continue to create tests in the same way as before.
- (more later as the specifics are discussed).
Once we decided which main project idea to take, we needed to narrow down the list of specific ideas. Here are the main ones, with a short explanation of why we chose them.
- Test Creation: For test creation, we had the option of designing a test editor interface where the teacher could enter test details and the individual questions. The advantage of this would be that we could readily save the specific details of each test with no error. We could also save the individual questions for later use, as well as allow quick editing of past exams.
On the other hand, we realized that teachers may not want to create all their tests from scratch, since today many teachers already have their tests as Word Docs or other formats. So we decided that instead of a test editor, we would allow the user to use their existing documents, and by making special annotations on a hard copy of the tests, our system will prepare the electronic version of the exam.
- Test Statistics: This was never an issue of choice, as we always knew our system would include it. We feel it is an essential tool for teachers to have, and out system will make it much easier for them to create and see statistics of their tests in various formats.
- Attendance sheet: A convenient and quite efficient way to take attendance AND at the same time assign pens to students before the exam.
- Test time taker: A test will have a predefined time to it, so any pen annotations outside of that time span will be ignored. This is part of the attempt to reduce cheating, which is an advantage that such technology provides.
- Combining autograding and manual grading will give great versitility to the whole system.
- Saving exams and results for future reference will help teachers be more productive.
- Student feedback via email will help the students get the most out of an exam.
Project Details
Target User Group
The idea is to have a system that would facilitate a faster, more efficient, and easier way for teachers to create and grade exams, quizzes, while students find the tests to be comfortable and easy to take. The targeted users can be any teachers and students in high schools or colleges. We want that the people who do not feel comfortable dealing with the revolutionary technology still find this helpful. The system will include exams at the class level, but also at a much larger, national, or even international level. The main advantage of the system will be the automatic grading and processing of multiple choice and true/false question results on exam, which saves teachers or readers tons of time, effort, and error-prone grading. Even non-autogradable exams can use the system to their advantage, such as having both electronic and paper copies at the same time, and fast return of the tests.
Problem Description
A lot of academic instructors today, including K-12 teachers or even college professors, use computerized exams and exercises. At a much greater scale, the TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language) exam is taken on computers all over the world. The obvious advantage of this is the ability to produce results on the spot as a variety of questions can be automatically graded by a computer. In order for teachers to use such software, however, all of their students need to have computer access at school, which is not yet possible in most schools around the country. Also, standardized tests like SAT are still taken by hand and then mailed to the central grading place because of the vast number of students that take it. Such process takes months for the results to come out. Could there possibly be a less costly way to have the advantage of computerized answers? Our system will enable teachers in less wealthy schools to have the advantages of computerized exams. Since the exam will still be taken on paper, the students or the schools do not need to purchase computers, but the much more cost efficient Anoto Digital Pen. The same applies to exams like SAT; since the less bulky (than a computer) equipment of a digital pen will enable the current number of test takers to remain for the same number of rooms, supervisors, and other resources. So the system will target mainly teachers while at the same time making it possible for large scale exams to be accomodated. On the other hand, a conscious effort needs to go into the paper interface for the students taking the exam. The aim is to make the transition from the current system have as few changes as possible, thus ensuring that there will be no confusion introduced.
Problem Context
We will be creating the inteface so as to work with previously created tests. We are giving teachers the freedom as to how they will format their multiple-choice exams. Therefore, our interface will have to be able to adapt to a variety of different test structures. In addition, we must take into account the average test size and then assure that outlining an exam for an average test is not overly time-consuming.
Since we are targeting teachers, we can assume that our user group is already competent in using computers and technology. Also, the patience most teachers possess will be helpful when it comes time for them to have to work around a problem they might run into during the course of using our product. We can also assume that if a teacher is motivated enough to decide to use the program, they will have the motivation to learn the special strokes used for outlining a test. They will realize that in the long run, it will save them a lot of time and energy.
Currently, some teachers have access to a Scantron machine in order to help them in grading their multiple-choice exams. Our solution will improve on that by being able to gather the exam data to display statistics on the results. We will give teachers the option of having students mark answers directly on the question sheet. Grades can be automatically entereded into a gradebook. Also, the history of a student's progress in the class will be easily viewable from the computer interface, so loosing exams will not be a problem.
Why the Anoto System is a Good Technology for the Problem
We believe that the proposed system makes use of two major advantages of the ANOTO technology. The first is the obvious answer that schools use pens! Unlike a fully computerized system, Anoto allows the users to use an interface (pen/paper) which are very well trained in and used to (and it is cheaper). In our case, this mainly applies to students taking a test, and teachers grading it.
The second major advantage is that the system provides a smooth transition into a more efficient way to prepare, take, grade and store exams. In particular, teachers will be able to use old exams - even hand written exams - to create electronic versions of those exams.
Also, Anoto will enable the autograding of certain questions, while at the same time allowing hand grading (also with an Anoto Pen) and merging the results as needed. We also feel that the use of the Anoto pen leaves great room for improvement. As OCR improves we could add features like signature recognition, conversion of written text to computer text for spelling and automatic grading, etc.
In general, the use of the Anoto System for exams will (to some extend) remove the manual labor involved in grading and processing test results (while at the same time provide many of the advantages of a fully electronic system) without the need to change the current way an exam is prepared and taken.
Solution Sketch
Description
- 1. The teacher is able to print out existing tests on special Anoto paper. Using their Anoto pen they can mark answer regions and correct answer selections by using special predefined gestures.
- 2. The teacher wiill print out the student tests on special Anoto paper. The students take the tests with Anoto pens, marking correct answers and scratching out incorrect answers. The backend will keep track of latest mark info and analyze marks to ensure the students intended answer. If there is a question the hardcopy can be pulled for verification.
- 3. The student tests are compared against the teacher's answer key to determine a grade.
- 4. Student's grades are autoentered into a gradebook and statistics can be made available such as:
- Mean
- Std Dev
- Curve Information
- Estimated time spent on problem
- Difficulty of problems (number of students getting same problem wrong)
- etc...
