Research And Design Of The Ontology-based Online Testing System

With the development of distance education theories and information and communications technology,distance education has become an increasingly important way of instruction.As a useful formative evaluation tool,online testing system has turned to be an essential part of distance education.It's highly important for students that the interaction and feedback from the online testing system,especially in the circumstance that teaching and learning are separated.For online testing system,the popularization of online learning not only makes a good opportunity to its growth,but also brings forward higher requirements against it.Instruction has benefited from former online testing systems which broke the constraints of time and space for testing and relieved teachers from checking test papers and scores.However,the test questions in these testing systems are isolated to others, and the concepts included in them are also difficult to be systemically represented. Besides,the feedback and remarks from the system are so simple that it couldn't offer helpful advice for students.After analyzing existing online testing systems and the actual needs,an ontology-based online testing system is designed.It offers three kinds of tests according to various test needs.The adaptive test basing on Item Response Theory is applied in self-testing module,which realizes individual testing and makes the test more efficient. Ontology is used to specify and structure the domain knowledge,and all the questions are connected to the knowledge elements in the ontology.On the basis of these,the paper forming and evaluation according to the knowledge elements are realized.After the completion of the test,the system will provide a detailed evaluation to students.It includes the student's performance and the right answers,more significantly,through the search of ontology the missing knowledge areas and learning advice will be given.Compared with former online testing systems,the system proposed in this paper improves in aspects of testing,feedback and evaluation.It meets the needs of individual testing and achieves the purpose of self-testing,self-diagnosing and self-facilitating for students.