MISESS: Web-Based Examination, Evaluation, and Guidance

MISESS is a Management Information System utilized to allow online, electronic access for students and teachers to all classes, related course material, and examinations. This system allows for various levels of user authentication, meaning that educators can control course and exam content and also determine the manner and time in which students may access material or take tests. Those that manage the system can, of course, make modifications to online materials at any time. Online examinations can take many forms and include various types of questions as well. Question types include multiple-choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, and essay format. Depending on the wishes of the instructor, carried out by the system administrator, test questions can even be drawn randomly from a set pool of questions only accessible to that instructor, with the potential implication that each individual student would take a different test that could be graded immediately.

These systems are implemented more often in universities, but wonder to what extent it would be manageable or effective in terms of development time to implement for a high school course. Many tests that I will administer may end up using multiple-choice, short answer, and true-false questions and if I had a testing system set up, I imagine I could save substantial time printing, grading, and handing back tests. Of course I would want to mind the digital divide, taking into account that perhaps sixty percent of my students are likely to have computers with internet access at home, meaning that such test administration should be conducted on school lab or library computers. Such an endeavor may be more feasible as a department-wide development task, although that would require standardizing the Spanish or ESL curricula and test material, which, again, may be very time consuming.

Tanrikulu, Z. (2006). MISESS: Web-Based Examination, Evaluation, and Guidance. EDUCASE, 29.1.