# Distance Learning as a Testing Tool for K-12 Education

In general Distance Learning (DL) is a tool used by educators to facilitate different areas of education. An area that most distance learning environments have to address is the effective evaluation of students. Distance Learning technology provides unconventional means of evaluating by testing, quizzing, and homework assignments. There are no paper quizzes, scantrons, or in-person proctors. Usually There are strong advantages such as efficiency and accuracy in evaluation but there are also clear disadvantages such as cheating, limiting responses, and inequal computer literacy of students.

## Background

Although K-12 environments are starting to show more integration of DL into curricula, post secondary institutions use DL more frequently. Evaluation students with DL is a cautious trend for most institutions and for good reason (see disadvantages below). However, when implemented correctly it can be a very useful tool.
The term evaluating covers test taking, homework assignments similar to tests, and more broadly, any other means of receiving measurable feedback of the student's progress.
Evaluating a students progress in the K-12 environment is becoming a more and more daunting task considering the amount of students in classrooms. Statistics show many schools suffering from overcrowding classrooms with ratios as high as 40 for students to teachers. The great advantages of efficient testing is alluring to educators to switch over to homework completed and graded via DL however online courses have had difficulty controlling cheating in quizzes, tests, or examinations because of the lack of teacher control. In a classroom situation a teacher can monitor students and visually uphold a level of integrity consistent with an institution's reputation. However, with distance education the student can be removed from supervision completely. Some schools address integrity issues concerning testing by requiring students to take examinations in a controlled setting.[23]
Assignments have adapted by becoming larger, longer, and more thorough so as to test for knowledge by forcing the student to research the subject and prove they have done the work. Quizzes are a popular form of testing knowledge and many courses go by the honor system regarding cheating. Even if the student is checking questions in the textbook or online, there may be an enforced time limit or the quiz may be worth so little in the overall mark that it becomes inconsequential. Exams and bigger tests may be harder to regulate.
Used in combination with invigilators, a pre-arranged supervisor trusted with overseeing big tests and examinations may be used to increase security. Many Midterms and Final examinations are held at a common location so that professors can supervise directly. When the Internet became a popular medium for distance education many websites were founded offering secure exam software and packages to help professors manage their students more effectively.

## Existing Programs and Means of Implementation
### K-12 Distance Learning Programs

Over a million children, teenagers, and adults are currently participating in some type of online K-12 schooling. Online schooling offers options and flexibility for families who want alternatives to traditional brick-and-mortar classroom learning, or for those with difficult schedules, or extenuating circumstances, or for returning adults. Students can use online schooling to make up missed credits, repeat courses, take enrichment classes, or earn an accredited high school diploma through the internet. Below are a list of just a few schools with grade level.
** Abbington High School (Grades 1 and Up Only)
** Alger Learning Center and Independence High School
** Ariel Christian Academy (Grades 3 and Up Only)
** Plano Home School Academy (Grades 4 and Up Only)
** Red Oak Academy
** Regina Coeli Academy (Grade 5 and Up Only)
** Seton Home Study School
** Southeast Atlantic Academy
** St. Thomas Aquinas Academy
** Summit Christian Academy (Grades 3 and Up Only)
** Texas Tech University Independent School District
** University of Missouri - Columbia High School (Grades 2 and Up Only)
These schools usually have a "course portal" or "learning management system" (LMS) where the virtual classroom takes place. This is very similar to many learning management systems colleges use to supplement courses. Documents are retrieved through the LMS, discussion boards are held, grades are recorded, and in particular it is where testing is done and homework assignments are submitted.
Below are screenshot examples of the testing environment of various LMS sites. The interface depends on the LMS platform used, which tool of the LMS is used, and the instructor's specific configuration of the evaluation.
* From a student's perspective
** see example of quiz
** see example of quiz results
* From an Instructor's perspective
** see example of building a quiz
** see example of viewing class results
Below are a few popular learnming management systems all of which include some form of evaluation tool for instructors.

### SharePointLMS

More popular for being an evaluation heavy LMS is Microsoft's SharePointLMS. Build-in authoring tools - quiz maker and Question Pool, which allows teacher not just create quizzes, but to keep a Pool of questions for future use in quizzes or exams. GradeBook to record the grades of the students and issue course certificates if applicable. Course Statistics, each course has a statistical report showing information such as the most active users, which areas / tools are used in the course. This can be filtered down to an individual student. SharePointLMS comes with a build in Blackboard converter enabling users of Blackboard to reuse their existing course materials.

### WebCT

WebCT now owned by Blackboard is used by many colleges with 10 millions students in 20 countries allows an instructor to customize tools to supplement classroom instruction. A quiz tool is used to asses students which is flexible in the format type of question and responses (multiple choice, essay question, fill-in-the-blank).

### eFront

eFront is designed to help create online courses with opportunities for rich interaction. eFront comes with a distinctive icon-based user interface that is intuitive to use. The platform offers a wide range of features from content creation, test builder, project management, extended statistics, internal messaging system, forum, chat, surveys and more. Open source software allows the user, with some knowledge of computer programming, to create customize tests and assessment tools. See video preview.

### Post Secondary Institutions with K-12 Distance Learning Programs

While some K-12 institutions have distance learning in place, it was the higher education community that made the greatest advancements in terms of presence, technology, design, and offerings. One popular school which offers K-12 distance learning education is Texas Tech University. The school is accredited within their own school district and therefore standards (Texas Tech University Independent School District).
There are many others similar to Texas Tech, some which are affiliated with colleges and universities and some which are independent institutions. Most have LMS software such as the above examples in place.

## Going Beyond Regular Testing

Because DL testing tools are inherent of computer testing technology, it possess similar attributes and possibilities.

### Computerized adaptive testing (CAT)

A method for administering tests that adapts to the examinee's ability level. For this reason, it has also been called tailored testing. CAT successively selects questions so as to maximize the precision of the exam based on what is known about the examinee from previous questions.[1] From the examinee's perspective, the difficulty of the exam seems to tailor itself to his or her level of ability. For example, if an examinee performs well on an item of intermediate difficulty, he will then be presented with a more difficult question. Or, if he performed poorly, he would be presented with a simpler question. Compared to static multiple choice tests that nearly everyone has experienced, with a fixed set of items administered to all examinees, computer-adaptive tests require fewer test items to arrive at equally accurate scores.[1] (Of course, there is nothing about the CAT methodology that requires the items to be multiple-choice; but just as most exams are multiple-choice, most CAT exams also use this format.) Adaptive tests can provide uniformly precise scores for most test-takers.[2] In contrast, standard fixed tests almost always provide the best precision for test-takers of medium ability and increasingly poorer precision for test-takers with more extreme test scores.
An adaptive test can typically be shortened by 50% and still maintain a higher level of precision than a fixed version.[1] This translates into a time savings for the test-taker. Test-takers do not waste their time attempting items that are too hard or trivially easy. Additionally, the testing organization benefits from the time savings; the cost of examinee seat time is substantially reduced. However, because the development of a CAT involves much more expense than a standard fixed-form test, a large population is necessary for a CAT testing program to be financially fruitful.
Adaptive testing, depending on the item selection algorithm, may reduce exposure of some items because examinees typically receive different sets of items rather than the whole population being administered a single set. However, it may increase the exposure of others (namely the medium or medium/easy items presented to most examinees at the beginning of the test).[2] Although not prevailent in LMS software yet, CAT algorithim could be easily migrated to LMS platforms.
See more about Computer Adaptive Testing

### Plagerism Detection

Essay questions on examinations, particularly if take-home-exams, are subjected to the possibility of plagerism. Plagiarism detection is the process of locating instances of plagiarism within a work or document. The widespread use of computers and the advent of the Internet has made it easier to plagiarize the work of others. Most cases of plagiarism are found in academia, where documents are typically essays or reports. However, plagiarism can be found in virtually any field, including scientific papers, art designs, and source code.
Detection can be either manual or computer-assisted. Manual detection requires substantial effort and excellent memory, and is impractical in cases where too many documents must be compared, or original documents are not available for comparison. Computer-assisted detection allows vast collections of documents to be compared to each other, making successful detection much more likely. LMS programs sometimes have tools that automatically run software to detect plagerism.
See more about Plagerism Detection

### Testing from a Database

Administering a test comprised of multiple questions, whether it be multiple choice, essay, or fill-in-the blank, a computer can easily generate many permutations of questions to make an exam. The questions are stored on a database and the computer draws questions from it. Because many exams are possible, a LMS program can generate many tests for students to practice or generate different tests to deter students from cheating.

## Cost and Other Factors to Consider

Usually testing with Distance Learning platforms require the ownership of the entire platform as it is "hosted" by the platform. The cost of various LMS platforms can range from free applications such as Moodle (a popular opensource user friendly LMS) to costly programs such as WebCT. Cost of such platforms being dependent mostly on traffic and amount of users ranging $50,000 to $125,000 for some programs.
The cost of ownership take into account other factors to run the site such as the site administrator(s), training for staff to use, if needed computer hardware, etc. Which mean free LMS programs could have significant cost of ownership if it serves a large community with a lot of overhead.
Various articles on LMS platforms can be found here which describe other concepts such as the Return on Investment, Human Capital and LMS, and Market Shares of Vendors (which play a large role on cost).

## Conclusion

Ultimately for K-12 environments it is up to technology administrators, school staff, district administrators to decide whether to use distance learning and how to use it in their programs. Although most LMS platforms are similar, finding the best fit platform is also important to best serve the needs of the users. Similarly using distance learning for student evaluation purposes needs careful consideration. The people who make these decisions have to keep in mind that LMS platforms and its testing tools need to be considered as mutually dependent entitites. In summary below are advantages and disadvantages of using distance learning as a testing tool.

### Advantages

* Efficient grading - Most promising of testing with any computer systems is the ability to test a large number of test takers
* Accurate - Errors made in correcting exams by hand are eliminated
* Instant results and statistics - Results can be returned to students for instant feedback due to low turnaround time of grading. Statistics can be generated for students to view where they are at or for a teacher to identify trouble areas ina subject.
* Mobility - Inherit of DL is the flexibility of when and where a student can be evaluated.
* Mobile medium - Aside from reducing paperwork, the evaluation and its results are accessible from anywhere anytime. This may prove useful in a parent-teacher meeting.
* Flexible testing - Computer based tests have the ability to administer a test and its questions. Adaptive testing (similar to the GREs) are useful in honing in on a students score more accurately and quickly. Many different versions of the same test can be created by a computer. Responses can be timed.
* Computer literacy - An indirect result of using the computer as a learning tool facilitates computer literacy.

### Disadvantages

* Cheating - Lack of proctering during evaluations may open the door for some to use illegal resources, especially the internet, to respond. A deterrent by some platforms is to have the computer create different versions of the same test.
* Limiting Responses - Some DL platforms limit the way a user can provide a response (i.e. multiple choice vs. essay response). All DL platforms will never achieve the same level of fliexibility that a hand written medium can. This limits freedom of communication by the user.
* Computer literacy and equality - Students may not have equal access to a computer with internet access and those that do are not all equally proficient in computer literacy. Those that are more literate can navigate the site and its exam better than those who aren't. The less able have much at stake because of the grading aspect of an evaluation. How well the evaluation is made is also dependent on the instructor's knowledge of the software. For example, if a teacher programs a test to register a correct answer for only responses that match exactly how she typed in a word with all lowercase letters, a student typing in the same word with the first letter capitalized will be marked incorrect.
* Cost - For secondary schools, distance learning is still rarely used and therefore considered by many school districts as a luxury rather than necessity. High schools unlike colleges have a difficult time budgeting distance learning proposals.

## References

10/2/08 New York Daily Post, New York City schools suffer massive overcrowding, statistics show link to article
Blackboard WebCT link to website Accessed on October 25, 2009
eFront LMS link to website Accessed on October 25, 2009
All-in-one Learning Management System (LMS) for SharePoint link to website Accessed on October 25, 2009
Online Schooling: Virtual Learning Options for Children and Teenagers link to article Retrieved October 20, 2009
K-12 Distance Learning Institutions link to list Accessed on October 27, 2009
Texas Tech University Independent School District link to website Accessed on October 27, 2009
Computer Adaptive Testing, Wikipedia link to article Accessed on October 27,2009
* 1. Weiss, D. J., & Kingsbury, G. G. (1984). Application of computerized adaptive testing to educational problems. Journal of Educational Measurement, 21, 361-375.
* 2. Thissen, D., & Mislevy, R.J. (2000). Testing Algorithms. In Wainer, H. (Ed.) Computerized Adaptive Testing: A Primer. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Plagerism Detection, Wikipedia Plagerism Detection Accessed on October 27,2009