The purpose of this project was the construction of a web-portal for the automation of the manual entrance exam for the subject "Preparatory studies of mathematics" at the Laurea University of Applied Sciences. Exam system automation provides digital platform to produce more accuracy and efficiency. The online exam system is an essential part of the LMS for evaluating its users.
The cancellation of classroom lectures, shutdown of campuses, non-availability of transport and many other restrictions in social life have put the students in a very difficult phase to continue their studies. The conventional assessment system of students has become unavailable in many parts of the world. Therefore, real-time online learning management and evaluation of students has become indispensable.
An online portal could meet the demand of students and reduce their worries about admission. The practical result of the project is the creation of a portal and justification of its need.
Client
Project background
Project objectives
Benefits and obstacles
Benefits
The evaluation of the students can be done in real time and recorded digitally, ensuring accuracy and reliability. The virtual system causes less stress for the students and reduces the chance of cheating during the test.
Obstacles
Primary planning for overcoming the obstacles
The theoretical background of a research illustrates the concepts of the theories related to the ongoing research. The related literature from various research articles and other articles should be reviewed to understand the depth of the topic. While assessing the theories from various resources, the key topics that have been deeply researched are - LMS, Online Examination System and Web Portal.
Learning management system (LMS)
Online examination system
The boom in digitization influences people to use modern technology and provides maximum benefit from it. Online study materials are a great resource for students and are even available for free. Students can use electronic return slips to submit assignments and can register for the exam via the online application.
This entire education process definitely gives the most percentage of accuracy and arouses the interest of the students. Some teachers prefer to teach the students face to face as they think that the minds of the students cannot be read when they are away. The online learning and examination system still has room to overcome this kind of undesirable circumstances.
Adopting artificial intelligence (AI) in online education system can play as a catalyst to understand the psychology of the students. According to Mark (2019), AI has the ability to personalize each student's demand, as it can provide individually oriented learning facilities that can increase student interaction in distance education.
What is web portal
Research methodology
Another option was quantitative research, which is usually used to test and validate a theory, where qualitative research provides a greater understanding of a topic. Therefore, a qualitative research methodology was chosen for in-depth knowledge of the topic. Since it was a client-oriented project, the client's requirements had to be regularly collected and measured.
Development methodology
Waterfall methodology
This is the phase where the goal of the project can be achieved as a deliverable. Throughout the development process of this project, each phase has relied on the deliverables from the previous one to complete a unified product at the end.
System planning
Client requirement
The ultimate requirement was to create a simple and functional web portal that can complete online exams for the client's students.
Outcome of the plan
System analysis
SWOT
To overcome this obstacle, a self-monitoring process was implemented to observe the timing of the progress.
SDLC
Since the project was led by a single researcher, the step-by-step integrated process ensured the progression and accuracy of the outcome.
Checking alternatives
Designing
Sketch
UI wireframes
Developing
Tools and technology
In a study (Terada 2017), it has been mentioned that approximately 75 million websites are managed by the WordPress CMS. The selection of WordPress for this project has not only facilitated the construction of the portal, but has also allowed research into this most popular CMS. A lot of usefulness of using WordPress has been mentioned (Web Expert: What is WordPress? Explained for Beginners 2020) where some reasons why a user should choose WordPress as a platform to develop a website are given.
As the portal deals with online examination system, few alternative quizzes related plugins have been checked while constructing the 'Question Management' and 'Paper Generation' functions. The prospects and functionality of all three of these plugins were demonstrated to the client. The 'Quiz Maker' plugin satisfied the customer's desire for its more professional look and standard features than others.
Elementor' was used as an editor that offers header, footer and block templates. All platforms, plugins, editors, which are free, were used for the development of the portal. While there were certainly some limitations with the free versions, it provided a wide range of technical skills that became an asset to this project.
During the research and checking of the alternatives, it was found that a web portal of an examination system needs few different pages containing information, instructions and execution. The portal was named “eExam” and a logo was created for the uniqueness of the page where. About Page: This page shows the details of the course and the reason for taking this online entrance test.
Based on the client's request, a link to the course material will be added to this page in the future. This page lists some restrictions and suggestions for taking this exam. Students can take the online exam and get their score instantly through this site.
Security measurement
CIA Triad
The information is kept confidential for unauthorized users and is only visible to the authorized users. The front and back of both sides will be available with all functions for the teacher. Since the portal is planned to be deployed within Laurea's intranet network, a certain model of CIA Triad was designed to determine the protection requirements illustrated in table 3.
High Integrity Administrator will be able to modify data Availability Very High No availability. Very High Confidentiality As a Laurea intranet, any outsider can cause a fatal damage to the system.
GDPR
BSI IT-Grundschutz
Testing
STLC
The client as a teacher planned to provide some students who could take the test. Test Design: The test was designed in two ways – hands-on testing with students as mentioned above and creating a survey report based on student feedback. Test Environment Setup: Since the portal exists in “localhost”, it has become difficult to allocate students to the same location for testing the portal due to the current pandemic.
The portal exam system was tested with some friends and family members instead of students. Test users were selected from among those who have procedural knowledge about online activities.
Survey/ Feedback from the users
Deploying
Maintenance
The theoretical knowledge of digital education systems strengthened the root to proceed to the advancement of the project. The possible vulnerabilities were identified and the proposed safeguards were revised to overcome those obstacles. It definitely enriched the skills and knowledge that can be exported as an asset in the future.
