Multidimensional Assessment of Open-Ended Questions for Enhancing the Quality of Peer Assessment in E-Learning Environments

Abstract

In online learning environments, peer assessment activities lack the observation and supervision by the teacher or instructor. Therefore, students may be lacked full effort to assess their peers. There exist the students' hesitation about criticizing their peers and scoring their peers honestly, the likelihood for peer assessment to be occasionally unreliable and unfair. The present assessment methods focus only on the single-dimensional assessment of content rather than the activities and collaborations among the students. Students also have no chance to analyze and comment on their peer answers. This study explored the multidimensional assessment method on open-ended question to foster positive attitudes and full effort among students engaging in E-learning environments. The objectives are as follows: 1) To develop a process model for multidimensional assessment (M-DA) to enable effective learning 2) To develop free-text answers assessment by using vector space model and semantic extraction model 3) To develop an algorithm for evaluating students' based on multidimensional assessment. Two groups of parallel students taking an e-course were tested on the system. The results of experiment noted that the proposed method overcomes the method just focuses on student assessment only without consideration and evaluation of the quality of the peer assessment. In light of the findings, the proposed method actively impacted on the development and improvement of learning and the quality of peer assessment among students in E-learning environments.