Approaches to online testing in Web-based educational systems

One of the most important characteristics of a Web-based educational system is its ability to assess the knowledge of the student and to adapt to his needs. Two main purposes of an online test are to evaluate students' progress and to help students to learn. Recently, the tests are used to accomplish an adaptive presentation or adaptive navigation support in educational adaptive hypermedia systems. This paper presents the two approaches to online Web-based testing. The first deals with the use of automated student testing and grading system with the main purpose to evaluate students' progress. The second approach is about the testing in an adaptive Web-based hypermedia educational system where the tests are primary used to update the student model. Our methods of creating, delivering and evaluating the test in both systems are described in this paper.