Customizing Moodle to include efficient Examination Processes

Project Summary

The scope of this project is to provide an easy customizable environment for faculty and examination controllers to form a database of questions over a Distributed Network (or may be Intranet as well at School) which could be used to generate examination papers for conducting examinations as well as for practice of students. Here, the scope and functions of this system should not be confused with those being provided by Moodle and others; because they aim to automate and facilitate interaction between students and faculty in regards to assignments, etc (through blogs) whereas the proposed system aims to introduce a standalone infrastructure for examinations and other academic analytical activities (online and offline).

The salient features (Goals) of the proposed system

• Providing an inbuilt mechanism to generate evaluation papers such as examination papers with various features and template support having a comprehensive database.
• Providing a Course, Subject and Unit wise Question Bank for students (for practice)
• Providing a scheduling support so that the students can follow up and adhere to course and check out where they stand (similar to Pert and Gantt charts; but with reduced complexities for enabling novoices to use it without any trouble)
• Providing plugin and external tools support for added functionalies
• Providing online examination facility to judge students online
• Storing and publishing the question papers and reports in form of pdfs, doc and other formats
• Providing statistical analysis and related graphical heuristics for analyzing results and patterns
• Providing a mechanism to get feedback of processes through a web interface
• Providing an interface to act as an effective mechanism for intra institutional communication
• Providing system and interface for attendance roster and other such relevant features

The 3-Dimensional structure of System(in terms of interfaces)

The whole system is planned to have a 3-Dimensional structure (in terms of interfaces):

1. Administrator (or school management)
2. Faculty (or Mentors)
3. Students

The above listed features / goals can further be classified for the three dimensions

1. Administrator
   • Publishing papers, managing templates and the database administration
   • Manage all the external tools and plugins
   • Managing and supervising question bank and various courses being offered
   • Supervise all schedules related to various courses and mentors and handling global variables
   • Scheduling and running online examinations
   • Manage the allowable formats and access rights to various mentors
   • Managing available statistical analysis and external tool support
   • Managing Feedback mechanisms and intra institutional communication (via forum and instant notice support)
   • Providing an interface to act as an effective mechanism for intra institutional communication
2. Faculty (or Mentors)
   • Submit questions to the courses assigned to them, choosing difficulty levels and other related properties for each question
   • Access to external tools and plugins as embedded by the Administration
   • Reviewing question bank generated against their course and answering instant queries by students
   • Use easy scheduler to chalk out course schedule for their courses and manage students progress against them
   • Viewing statistical analysis and related graphical heuristics for analyzing results and patterns for their courses
   • Be a part of feedback mechanism to keep the educational channel interactive and alive
3. Students
   • Can access Course, Subject and Unit wise Question Bank and solve questions online/offline
   • Check scheduler for current assignments (to follow up at moodle) or to check course progress
   • Participate in time bound online examinations
   • Viewing question papers and question bank in various formats such as pdfs, doc, etc
   • View statistical analysis and related graphical heuristics of class / institution
   • Feedback about courses, questions and process through relevant interface

Apart from this, an Assistance System (initially a trainer interface) to lead the student through all the features and mechanisms of the system will be incorporated

Technology and Modules Summary

This section entails about the technology used, modular structure and technical abstract of modules.

Technology Used

The technology proposed to use is LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP), CGI along with AJAX

Modular Structure

The modular structure of System being proposed can be visualized as follows:

Technical Abstract of Modules

Mentor Module:

Mentor module undertakes all the features and goal as described in the previous section and uses an AJAX engine to interact with the Administrator module. A cache is implemented to tackle multiple request and a situation of overload at the mentor end. It is to be noted that the figure illustrates a single mentor whereas multiple mentors may be issuing queries over the network

Student Module:

Student module used AJAX engine as intermediate for all transactions with server but for examination routine, during which no cache is maintained and a secure communication channel is established.

Adminstrator Module

The Administrator module is responsible for processing all requests through scheduling and caching all XMLHttpRequests and also servicing examination routines under secure channel. The other responsibilities shared by administrator module is database backup, maintanence, plug-ins profiling and other administrative responsibilities as listed above.

Coding Paradigm Used

The coding to be done will be object oriented with libraries of classes to be written up first. This will follow with objects being declared under main files of scripting with template based look and feel induction to the system. The caching at server side will also curtail through the usage of classes and code snippets of CGI.

Work Plan

The work plan for the design and development for the system has been planned as follows:

• Prior to GSoC Start: Chalking out details of each module and refining the requirements
• Week 1: Creating Blueprint for the system and System's prototype
• Week 2: Developing and testing Administrator's module
• Week 3: Developing and testing Mentor's module
• Week 4: Developing and testing Students module and interfaces
• Week 5: Packaging and Integration testing
• Week 6: Further plug-ins incorporation and improvements based on testing and feedbacks
• Week 7,8: System implementation and stress test, Beta testing
• After GSoC: Maintainence and Support

Mentor

Any interested mentor may please enlist his/her name here

Deliverables

The deliverables for the project will include:

1. All script files for the three modules 2. A trainer module to train the usage of system to the students 3. An installer file to install the database and set environment variables 4. Comprehensive documentation and help files

To add to the deliverables, I will be available for help and assistance to the developed system in future and handle any bugs