CHAPTER 1

1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND
Many educators teach to the test, with varying degrees of institutional support, therefore, for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to produce educational transformation, educators must consider which assessment techniques permit students to utilise the affordances of new technology. Without a suitable, computer based way of conducting examinations (as an example of rigorous or standardised assessment); curriculum transformation may be unlikely to occur because assessment is a major determinant in teaching. This project is preliminary,

producing an eExamination known as Digital Examination and its use in education institution. As flexible and online learning mediated by ICT becomes more pervasive, there is a growing need for educators to consider modes of assessment using more flexible and less man power work to accelerate taking of examinations in educational institutions. The cost of assessment and examination taking in higher education is the most rapidly growing component of tuition fees, however, the increasing discrepancy between teaching through blended or online delivery with a learning content management system, and assessing using pen and paper, is another reason to consider ways in which candidates can verify their, through examinations whilst using computers. The role of ICT in supporting the curriculum and examination has been extensively evaluated by some large, government sponsored projects, e.g. The ICT and attainment review in England (Cox, Abbott, Webb, Blakeley, Beauchamp & Rhodes, 2003) found positive effects in almost all subjects, but particularly with specific uses such as word processing in English, modelling in mathematics, or using simulations in science. Many similar studies have noted the overall impact of ICT integration as additional motivation to learn since cheating in such environment is minimized, especially with Digital Examination.

1.2 PROBLEM DEFINITION

It must be noted that education is one very important way of developing our nation (Ghana). Taking exams forms an integral part of both formal and informal education as far as knowledge acquisition is concerned and it brings or serves the purpose of teaching and learning.The current examination system in the Ghanaian education platform is what is called manual way of writing exam, these system allow teachers to set exams questions on paper for students to answer the question also on paper. This system of writing exams has in existed for so many years with some flaws or some physical disfigurement that prevents it from being totally perfect such as

inadequate data security, More man power, Time consuming, Needs manual calculations, impersonation in the examination hall; leakages of examination questions; mercenaries hired by registered students to write the exam for them; bribing examination officials - supervisors and invigilators; desperation of parents to buy live questions for their wards; conspiracy and collaboration of security agents and officials of public examination to compromise the integrity of the examination.There is a need for a system that will mend all these flaws to be created in more innovative way, and also in a way that the teachers and students will feel comfortable when it comes to writing of exams.

1.3 OBJECTIVES AND AIMES

1.3.1 AIMES The main aim of the project is to allow teachers conduct computer-based examinations to the students even in the absence of an internet infrastructure. 1.3.2 OBJECTIVES The above mentioned will be achieved by; y y Developing a secured examination system to handle examination taking Allowing faculty to create questions. Questions can have multiple options, multiple answers or can be text answers y To allow automatic and immediate grading after exams.

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

This project will be accepted by many educational institutions, since its main use is in schools. More stakeholders including y GOVERNMENT will be interested in this project in many ways. Since this is an innovation, the government interest in this project will be as to implement this software in government schools to reduce exams malpractices. As a developing country, introducing Digital Examination in schools shows that Ghana is developing y ACADEMIA will be another reason why the schools will be interested in this project. Digital Examination will serve as the basics for other student to work and improve on our examination system. Also, it can be used as reference for similar projects y STUDENTS will accept this project since they will be able to view their results instantly and also previous performance can be accessed anytime. Digital Examination will also save their time since is not manual. y TEACHERS/EXAMINERS will also accept this project. Digital Examination will enable examiners to conduct their examination with ease and less manpower work.

1.5 LIMITATIONS OF STUDY

y This system is going to solve a lot of problems pertaining to Examination and malpractices. Due to the time within which this project is supposed to be closed, the system is limited to certain functionalities when it could further be developed to attain great functionalities and better flexibilities. y We could not get access to all the data we needed to develop this system. Because of this, the system will be developed base on the data collected so far for the project. y Money is another problem why the system is limited in functionalities. Not enough funds were gathered to get all the resources we needed to develop the project.

Duration in which we took to undertake the project is limited. This will put some limitations on the system since not all functions might function properly due to the limited amount of time.

1.6 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

y Why digital examination, why not maintain the manual way of writing examination? At the end of this project, student will be happy. The system will solve their problem of difficulties in writing exams because of the flexibilities of the system. y Due to this reason, will you prefer a manual system with no good security to a computerise system with good security? y y How will you rate a computerised system and the manual way of writing examination? Does the manual system do the same half work that the computerise system does for the examiners?

CHAPTER 2 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 INTRODUCTION
The role of ICT in supporting the curriculum has been extensively evaluated by some large, government sponsored projects. This literature review delves into Test, and Online Examination system. This review also presents to readers what experts and others have said or written about Test and Online Examination over the past years and recently. However, it stands the chance of being reviewed and also adding to the content whenever the need may be.

2.2 TEST

Kathy Cox, State Superintendent of Schools, in the Georgia test program,said that . A good testing program, combined with a strong curriculum, can pave the way for targeted, focused instruction that will help improve student achievement like never before inour history. A test or examination (or "exam") is an assessment intended to measure a test-taker's knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics (e.g., beliefs). A test may be administered orally, on paper, on a computer, or in a confined area that requires a test taker to physically perform a set of skills. This is intended to assess an individual about a particular aspect of knowledge independently.Tests vary in style, rigor and requirements. For example, in a closed book test, a test taker is often required to rely upon memory to respond to specific items whereas in an open book test, a test taker may use one or more supplementary tools such as a reference book or calculator when responding to an item. A test may be administered formally or informally. 2.2.1 WRITTEN TEST Written tests are tests that are administered on paper or on a computer. A test taker who takes a written test could respond to specific items by writing or typing within a given space of the test or on a separate form or document. A test developer's choice of which style or format to use when developing a written test is usually arbitrary given that there is no single invariant standard for testing. Be that as it may, certain test styles and format have become more widely used than others. As a result, these tests may consist of only one type of test item format (e.g., multiple choice test, essay test) or may have a combination of different test item formats (e.g., a test that has multiple choice and essay items). 2.2.2 MULTIPLE CHOICES Multiple choices are a form of assessment in which respondents are asked to select the best possible answer (or answers) out of the choices from a list. The multiple choice format is most frequently used in educational testing, in market research, and in elections-- when a person chooses between multiple candidates, parties, or policies. Multiple choice testing is particularly popular in the United States.

(Thorndikeet all) developed an early multiple choice test, Frederick J. Kelly (1915) was the first to use such items as part of a large scale assessment. While Director of the Training School at Kansas State Normal School (now Emporia State University) (1915), he developed and administered the Kansas Silent Reading Test. Soon after, Kelly became the third Dean of the College of Education at the University of Kansas. The first all multiple choice, large scale assessment was the Army Alpha, used to assess the intelligence of World War I military recruits. 2.2.3 TRUE OR FALSE True/False questions present candidates with a binary choice - a statement are either true or false. This method presents problems, as depending on the number of questions, a significant number of candidates could get 100% just by guesswork, and should on average get 50%. 2.2.4 FILL-IN-THE-BLANK A fill-in-the-blank item provides a test taker with identifying characteristics and requires the test taker to recall the correct term. There are two types of fill-in-the-blank tests. The easier version provides a word bank of possible words that will fill in the blanks. For some exams all words in the word bank are exactly once. If a teacher wanted to create a test of medium difficulty, they would provide a test with a word bank, but some words may be used more than once and others not at all. The hardest variety of such a test is a fill-in-the-blank test in which no word bank is provided at all. This generally requires a higher level of understanding and memory than a multiple choice test. Because of this, fill-in-the-blank tests[with no word bank] are often feared by students. 2.2.5 ESSAY Items such as short answer or essay typically require a test taker to write a response to fulfill the requirements of the item. In administrative terms, essay items take less time to construct.As an assessment tool, essay items can test complex learning objectives as well as processes used to answer the question. The items can also provide a more realistic and generalizable task for test. Finally, these items make it difficult for test takers to guess the correct answers and require test takers to demonstrate their writing skills as well as correct spelling and grammar.

The difficulties with essay items are primarily administrative. For one, these items take more time for test takers to answer. When these questions are answered, the answers themselves are usually poorly written because test takers may not have time to organize and proofread their answers. In turn, it takes more time to score or grade these items. When these items are being scored or graded, the grading process itself becomes subjective as non-test related information may influence the process. Thus, considerable effort is required to minimize the subjectivity of the grading process. Finally, as an assessment tool, essay questions may potentially be unreliable in assessing the entire content of a subject matter.

2.3 ONLINE EXAMINATION SYSTEMS

During the years, online examination system has been developed by different people with different upgrades. The advent of web applications into the computing technology has brought about a significant revolution in our social life including the traditional system of education and examination. Many institutions are beginning to reevaluate their traditional methods and have considered providing pedagogical materials through the Internet. Several studies have been carried out on distance education which encompasses web classroom and webbased online examination (Yuan, et al, 2003; WebCT, 2009; Jackson et al, 1997; and Stina et al, 2000) to mention a few. One important area of application of the web

technology is in the development of web-based testing and assessment (Iyilade et al, 2005). Web-based testing and assessment systems offer greater flexibility than the traditional approach because test could be offered at different times by students and in different locations (Jay, et al 2001). More importantly, questions could be shuffled having the same structure and level but different contents. Basically, the electronic examination (e-Examination for short) system involves the conduct of examinations through the web or the intranet and it reduces the large proportion of workload on examination, training, grading and reviewing. The set of questions often used in the e-examination system are multiple choice objective tests and quizzes that can be formally and easily evaluated online. The rest of this paper is organized as follow; section 2 examines related works particularly on online education, section 3 states the objective of research work, section 4 presents the statements of problem, section 5 presents the research methods employed, section 6 presents the system architecture for e-examination, section 7 discusses the analysis of result, while the paper is concluded in section 8. Research on (IEEE, 2010) has shown that, online examination system not only reflects the justification and objectivity of examination, but also releases the workload of teachers, which is accepted by more and more schools, certification organizations and training organizations. Most online examination systems only support several fixed question types and don't allow users define their own question types, so they have pool scalability. Some online examination system, which not only provides several basic question types but also allows users to define their new question types (user-defined question type) through composing of basic question types and/or user-defined question types, which is realized based on the object-oriented conception and composite design pattern. The online examination system overcomes the shortcoming of old online examination systems and has better extensibility and flexibility. Gaytan (2007) presented a detailed historical background of online education, with regards to its current status, its potentials and limitations that could lead to the

advancement of the scholarship of teaching and learning. He stressed the need for online instructors to understand the way online education has evolved over the years from previous conceptions of education and the wide array of implications and assumptions involved in the delivery of online education. He also presented some recommendations for the advancement of online education. 2.3.1 E-EXAMINATION IMPLEMENTATION IN NIGERIA

Ayo et al (2007) proposed a model for e-Examination in Nigeria where all applicants are subjected to online entrance examination as a way of curbing the irregularities as proposed by the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB), the body saddled with the responsibility of conducting entrance examinations into all the Nigerian universities. This model was designed and tested in Covenant University, one of the private universities in Nigeria. Their findings revealed that the system has the potentials to eliminate some of the problems that are associated with the traditional methods of examination such as impersonation and other forms of examination malpractices. Based on the development of e-learning in the only Open University in Nigeria (Ipaye, 2009), discusses the process of establishing e-learning environment. Another paper seeks to solve a part of that problem by designing and developing a web application where tests in multiple choice formats will be taken online and graded immediately (Akinsanmi et al, 2010). The web application relies solely on Microsoft developed technologies. It runs on the Microsoft.net framework, uses the ASP.NET web server, C# as the intermediate language, ADO.NET to interact with the relational database and Microsoft SQL server as the relational database. Ayo et al (2007) and Akinsanmi (2010) presented a 3-tier architecture comprising the presentation tier, the logic tier and the database tier. The presentation tier offers an interface to the user; the logic tier serves as the middleware that is responsible for processing the users requests, while the database tier serves as the repository of a pool of thousands of questions, It also consists of other modules for authentication (using User name/Registration Number and Password) and computing results. This is the architecture used by all the e-exams centers visited within Nigeria and it is also the same architecture that was used even in other countries with just little modifications. This type of architecture did not give security issues too much attention and impersonation is very likely.

The Nigerian Open University (NOU) is a typical example of e-learning platform where lectures are delivered through radio and television broadcast. However, the deployment of very small aperture terminals (VSATs) with video-conferencing was to enhance the performance of NOU project effectively with a view to extending the facilities to the rural dwellers (Oliver, 2003). Osuji (2005) listed the elements of distance learning as print media (print and electronic), occasional face-to-face tutorials between teachers and the involvement of different role players. Furthermore, the Nigeria National IT policy, which was formulated in the year 2000, is responsible for the monumental developments across the various sectors of the economy. The vision is to make Nigeria an IT capable country in Africa and a key player in the information society. Its primary mission is to Use IT for: education; creation of wealth; poverty eradication; job creation; governance; health; agriculture; etc. (Ajayi, 2005). The drive has led to major developments such as the: Mobile Internet Units (MIUs), which include busses equipped with ICT facilities such as PCs, peripheral devices and VSAT which are used to carry ICT education to rural areas; and the WIN Project, tagged Wire Nigeria. It is intended to provide ICT infrastructure to all the nooks and crannies of the country. The project includes the provision of VSAT to the 774 local governments in the country, and the installation of the necessary infrastructures particularly, fibre optic backbone across the nation. 2.3.2 ONLINE TEST STIMULATORS

Sanjeevet all (1997), developed an online examination or test stimulator system. The purpose of their on-line test simulator was to take online test in an efficient manner and no time wasting for checking the paper. The main objective of the on-line test simulator was to efficiently evaluate the candidate thoroughly through a fully automated system that not only saves lot of time but also gives fast results. The online teststimulator created by for taking online test had the following features y In comparison to the other systems, the proposed system will be lesstime consuming and more efficient. y Analysis will be very easy

Result will be very precise and accurate and will be declared in veryshort span of time because calculation and evaluations are done by thesimulator itself.

The proposed system is very secure as no chances of leakage ofquestion paper as it is dependent on the administrator only.

The logs of appeared candidates and their marks are stored and can bebackup for future use

Mhammed et al (2007) worked on the challenges in distance learning unit. He observed that inefficient management could lead to a variety of problems in course delivery, such as delays in obtaining textbooks, problems in obtaining copyright permission, and even course delays. In an effort to facilitate, streamline and improve forms management, a system was designed to streamline the management of required forms for face-to-face, hybrid, online and televised courses. The system developed provides faculty, and distance learning administrators with an easy method to manage all forms effectively and efficiently.