Adopting computer-assisted assessment in evaluation of handwritten answer books: An experimental study
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Adopting computer-assisted assessment in evaluation of handwritten answer books: An experimental study Sujan Kumar Saha 1
& Rushali
Gupta 1
Received: 20 December 2019 / Accepted: 22 April 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The use of computers in educational assessment is a widely explored territory. Several studies have been performed to show the effectiveness of computer-assisted assessment (CAA) and it has been accepted in various education sectors. However, due to the lack of sufficient infrastructure and other issues, the paper-based examination is still being used for educational assessment in many countries including India. Existing CAA frameworks require the examination to be conducted on a digital platform. So, these do not apply to paper answer books. We propose a two-phase framework for automatic evaluation of handwritten answer books. The first phase converts the answers written on papers to a digital form using a neural network-based handwritten answer recognizer. The second phase evaluates the answer to generate a numerical score. For this evaluation, we use a model answer-based approach where various levels of similarities between the model answer and a student answer are computed. To assess the performance of the developed system, we apply it to the evaluation of class VII Social Science Geography answer books of an Indian school. The experimental result shows that the proposed approach is quite promising. Keywords Automatic answer evaluation . Handwritten answer book . Handwritten
character recognition . Computer-assisted assessment . Educational assessment
1 Introduction Assessment is a key component of teaching and learning. With the rise of communications technology, automatic assessment is a rapidly expanding field. The conventional approach for the assessment relies on the evaluation of students’ answer books. Handwritten paper answer books are the primary medium there. However, handwritten * Sujan Kumar Saha [email protected]
1
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology Mesra, Ranchi 835215, India
Education and Information Technologies
answer books lead several challenges including difficulty in management and preservation, time-taking evaluation, and maintaining consistency in assessment. Computerassisted assessment (CAA) is an effective alternative. It uses computers for assessment and becomes increasingly popular. The massive growth of information and communication technologies (ICT), demands from the e-learning sectors, and steps towards smart education motivated the research community to work on CAA platforms. Numerous studies have been conducted to show the effectiveness of CAA in various setups (Chapelle and Voss 2016; Clariana and Wallace 2002; Croft et al. 2001; Khoshsima et al. 2017; Sangwin and Kocher 2016; Shute and Rahimi 2017; Sim et al. 2004). Despite the advantages, widespread implementation of CAA is hindered in many countries including India due to lack of infrastructure. Sch
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