In our system, a computer provides tests to the mobile devices of the students; they then return the answers to be corrected. The framework provides real-time knowledge about the progress of the class to the teacher and real-time feedback to the students. Our low-cost implementation makes it unnecessary to incorporate additional resources or to modify the infrastructure.
In our system, a computer provides tests to the mobile devices of the students; they then return the answers to be corrected. The framework provides real-time knowledge about the progress of the class to the teacher and real-time feedback to the students. Our low-cost implementation makes it unnecessary to incorporate additional resources or to modify the infrastructure.
In our system, a computer provides tests to the mobile devices of the students; they then return the answers to be corrected. The framework provides real-time knowledge about the progress of the class to the teacher and real-time feedback to the students. Our low-cost implementation makes it unnecessary to incorporate additional resources or to modify the infrastructure.
Real-Time Assessment in the Classroom M. CRISTINA RODRIGUEZ-SANCHEZ, A
NGEL TORRADO-CARVAJAL, JOAQUIN VAQUERO,
SUSANA BORROMEO, J. ANTONIO HERNANDEZ-TAMAMES Dpto. de Tecnologa Electronica, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, C\Tulipan, s/n. Mostoles, Madrid, Spain Received 13 January 2014; accepted 26 June 2014 ABSTRACT: Personalized feedback tools in learning is a powerful method that expert applies when helping students to optimize their learning. We propose a new educational framework to optimize the continuous evaluation process for large groups. In our system, a computer provides tests to the mobile devices of the students; they then return the answers to be corrected. The framework provides real-time knowledge about the progress of the class to the teacher and real-time feedback to the students, increasing the rate of student success. Our low-cost implementation makes it unnecessary to incorporate additional resources or to modify the infrastructure. We have tested it in several courses and conferences. We conclude with an evaluation and a discussion from different stakeholders perspectives. 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 9999:110, 2014; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae; DOI 10.1002/cae.21611 Keywords: educational technology, computer aided instruction; continuous assessment; wireless communication; applications in subject areas; interactive learning environments; mobile computing INTRODUCTION The regulatory modications promulgated by the Bologna Process result in the implementation of newuniversity degrees structures in Spain and the adoption of the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) [1]. This implies a shift from a traditional teachercentered process to a learnercentered process, through a continuous assessment system. Although it would be desirable to have a small ratio of students per teacher (<20), the actual situation is different (>50). Therefore, a new approach to the continuous assessment system is necessary [2] and to control attendance of students. In this context, Information and Commu- nication Technologies (ICTs) can help. Particularly, in the case of Spain, Smartphones are widespread, and increasing to numbers that point to the arrival of ubiquitous learning in a few years [3,4]. There are some commercial solutions that try to solve the continuous assessment problem by means of realtime computer assisted assessment systems, based on classroom needs [5]. Development of adapted environment for learning is a key issue in computerbased education for the next decade [6]. According to ref. [7] these technical has been recognized as a promising issue in the eld of computerbased adaptive educational technologies. However, the costs of most implementation are high. In this work, a system without an extra cost, that allows to automate the process of continuous assessment according to the ESHE (European Space of Higher Education) guidelines is proposed. It takes advantage of the infrastructure already available in many classrooms and the mobile devices of the students. All the components of the system are low cost, offtheshelf and independent of any specic vendor. This system integrates current and easily accessible wireless technologies and mobilebased technologies, so it is not necessary to build new components. Based on The motivation of students could be increased combining traditional learning with the use of new methodologies, informa- tion and communication technologies [811]. Those devices improve the learning and the development process for student centered learning methodologies, offering realtime evaluation that Correspondence to M.C. RodriguezSanchez (cristina.rodriguez.sanchez@urjc.es). 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1 increases the effectiveness of the learning process. In ref. [12], the authors present a tool to guide the students in their learning process proposing the corresponding learning activities for each particular student. Many solutions have integrated web tools to make real time assessment [13]. Other solutions are oriented to data mining on formative assessments such as [14] For real time evaluation, [15] proposes a newapproach by presenting multiple forms of computer programming questions such as statement llingin and algorithm design. Over the last years, the rapid improvement of new technologies is a considered to be a fast and accurate tool for the assessment of students learning [16] based on computerbased assessment. However, most solutions require a computer for each student, therefore the cost of deployment could be a problem for many universities. Besides, there is a problemto validate with these kinds of solution the attendance control in a physical way of students for test evaluations. Managing resources of computer based assessment and attendance controls for large groups are important issues. We propose a modular system that allows the deployment of two options: a basic and a complete system. The basic system consists of mobile devices with an interactive software application for mobile devices and a gateway to connect themwith the teachers computer, which includes software consisting of a teaching database with different kind of tests and automatic assessment capabilities. Besides, this software allows to follow in a easy way a attendance control. The complete system consists of the basic system plus an Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) connected to the teachers computer. Students may answer, in realtime, questions projected on a screen or onto the IWB using wireless communica- tion between their mobile devices and the gateway. When the host receives the answers from the students it generates individual assessments and several statistics related to the current test. This system aims at decreasing timeconsuming tasks such as grading many tests, allowing teachers to focus on measuring the students progress. The teacher does not need to collect data since the system does it automatically and in realtime. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE AND OPERATION The automatic assessment system is illustrated in Figure 1. As mentioned, the complete system consists of four basic elements: an Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) or Digital Board (IDB), imple- mented as a standard computer connected to a standard projector, the automatic assessment application, installed in the same computer, an interactive application installed on the students mobile devices (such as personal Smartphones, laptops, tablets or any other device with WiFi communication capability) and a gateway, implemented as a standard WiFi router. In the following sections, the different blocks of the system will be described: the interactive whiteboard, the interactive application for the mobile device, the WiFi gateway and the integration of the complete system. Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) IWBs are ICTs resources that try to get students attention with dynamic classes and rich content, capturing their attention by Figure 1 Architecture and systemimplementation scenario, using WiFi as communication technology. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.] 2 RODRIGUEZ-SANCHEZ ET AL. interacting with the board while introducing improvements offered by ICTs in this area. The IWBcan be used as a teaching resource by itself. Figure 2 shows an IWB consisting of a computer (typically a laptop), a projector and a whiteboard. This conguration allows the user to: Write directly on the blackboard, underline, etc. Control the software with a stylus (sometimes simply with the ngers) Interact with programs on the screen. Other utilities associated with the PDI software. In addition, most IWBs are supplied with software that provides tools and features specically designed to maximize interaction opportunities. These generally include the ability to create virtual versions of paper ipcharts, pen and highlighter options, and possibly even virtual instruments that would be used in traditional. Any previously existing IWB could be used, thus reducing the cost of the system. If no IWBis available, it can be implemented with a standard PC and free or open source software [17] installed on it, any projector, and a Wiimote compatible device as the pointing device. There is no need for a special screen, being even possible to use any white wall as a projection surface. This system has been developed by one the authors of this paper and a complete description can be found in [18]. The computer requirements are minimal, running on any operating system and requiring Bluetooth communications. Either a desktop computer or a portable computer such as a laptop or netbook would be ne. In this system developed, we used the IWB to display the questions and, for example, their multiplechoice answers. Teacher Software Application Interactive teaching table. This is a software application, installed on a standard computer that displays the questions on the IWB. It manages the database used for the automatic assessment system. Note that a dedicated computer for this application is not needed, as the same computer that controls the IWB could be used, thus reducing size and cost of the system. The Interactive Teaching Table (ITT) has been imple- mented with several functionalities: generate new tests, view tests, start test, stop test, view and record results and exit. Figure 3 shows an example of the automatic assessment application on the teachers computer. It is a snapshot of the graphical user interface (GUI) associated to the ITT. This easytouse interface allows the teacher to start a test and the automatic assessment process, besides recording the data of the tests in les. When the teacher chooses the Generate New Test button, she is able to store several question with their corresponding answers. The teacher can introduce several answers, but only one is correct. Once the teacher has lled in the form and chosen the correct answer for each question, the system will generate the nal Figure 2 Typical interactive whiteboard (IWB) classroom teaching. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.] Figure 3 Snapshot of the teachers software application (Interactive teaching table). [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.] AN OPEN-SOURCE TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEM FOR REAL-TIME ASSESSMENT 3 template for the test. This template will be stored at the database of the assessment system. If the teacher wants to start a test exam, the teacher will click on Start Test button. At this moment, the ITT send all entire information to the students. For this issue, the student will have a Mobile Device interactive application for students. This information contains the test exams and parameters of time assessment (time to start the exam, time to nish the exam). When this Application for students receives this information, the phone will process it in order to showa test examwith questions and multiple choices for questions at the screen. The students will answer this test exam using their phones (see Mobile Device Interactive Application for Students) in a limited time. At the end of the exam, the ITTcollects the answers received fromthe students at the same time, identies the students, checks their answers with the database and automatically marks each test individually. Once the entire tests are marked, it computes the desired statistics, such as number of students who participated and passed the test or number of total right and wrong answers. The results can be graphically displayed, giving fast visual information and a global view of the general performance of the students in the test (Fig. 4). Besides, the data can be exported in several formats, such as an Excel worksheet. The functionality of this application can be modied or adapted to evaluate any desired parameter or to follow any evaluation guideline. Attendance control application. We have developed a new application to control the attendance of students every day in a class automatically. This application facilitates the attendance control process to the teacher in a laboratory, a class, or an exam. The teacher can install this mobile application in an Android, Blackberry, or iOS Smartphone. The application consists of three choices: view students in a class, validate and conguration. The view students choice is used for knowing the registered students in a course by retrieving data from a database. At the beginning of the course, every student will receive a QRcode with his ID. The students can paste the QRcode in his ID card of school. The validate choice uses the camera of the phone to scan the QRcode of student. Finally, the conguration choice allows to change the background color of the application. Figure 5 shows an example of the mobile application. When a student arrives at a class, he needs to show the QRcode pasted on his ID card to the teacher. The teacher only needs to open the attendance control application and click on the Validate button. After, the application sends this information of attendance to the database. Mobile Device Interactive Application for Students This mobile application is the interactive software installed in mobile devices of the students. This application allows students to participate in the ongoing test being displayed on the IWB. The application shows the multiplechoice answers in the Smartphones display in a test form. These answers are shufed randomly for each student, to prevent copying among them. The student chooses the appropriate answers according their knowledge, which are sent, via WiFi, to the teachers computer automatic assessment application for further processing and evaluation. In order to make the interactive application usable in most mobile devices, it has been developed for different Smartphones operating systems, such as Blackberry OS, Symbian, Android, and iOS. The last two allows the software to be installed also in tablets equipped with Android or iOS. Finally a Java version is also available for laptops or netbooks, independent of their operating system assuming that the appropriate Java Virtual Machine is installed. If needed, a version for Windows Phone could also be developed. The mobile devices interactive application has been primarily developed for Smartphones because of their predominant Figure 4 Example of snapshot of graphical statistics of the test. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.] 4 RODRIGUEZ-SANCHEZ ET AL. position in the Spanish market and its future projection [4]: 40% of Spanish mobile users already have a Smartphone and 8% o them have a tablet. Although there are Smartphone users of all ages, most of them are young. The application has to be available to be downloaded by the students. This can be done directly from the teachers computer automatic assessment application, via WiFi, from a website, from an elearning platform, such as Moodle, or from an online software store, such as Android Market or Apple Store. The application has the same formats and functionalities for all platforms. It consists of an empty template, which will be lled with questions and answers chosen by the teachers. One key issue is that there is only one application for all the tests to be carried during the course. All the questions, the answers and the assessment capabilities are in the teachers computer automatic assessment application. Figure 6 shows an example of the application developed for an iPhone. The snapshot shows three screens of the interface. The rst one is the login screen; the student will use an IDto login in the application. The second are the possible choices of the answers related to the current question. The third is the validation of the choice. As can be seen, the interface is very easy to use and intuitive. Wi-Fi Gateway In order to allow communication between the students mobile devices and the teachers computer automatic assessment applica- tion, a gateway is required. This is implemented by means of a standard WiFi router. The system automatically congures the teachers computer and the WiFi router in order to make a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). Thus, all information coming from Figure 6 Smartphone application. This snapshot shows three screens of the interface. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.] Figure 5 Attendance control application for an Android. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.] AN OPEN-SOURCE TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEM FOR REAL-TIME ASSESSMENT 5 the students mobile devices is forwarded to the teachers computer; after the automatic assessment, the application processes the answers and stores the data in a database; nally it generates evaluations and statistics automatically. Notice that an Internet access is not needed, only a WiFi router connected to the teachers computer. This adds exibility to the systemdeployment, as no previous infrastructure in needed. Communications between a students mobile device and the automatic assessment application start with the connection of the mobile device to the system WLAN (named WiQuestion in this particular case) as a client. The teachers computer acts as the server for this network. Once the mobile device is connected, a communication protocol begins between client and server. METHODOLOGY A typical test process is described in this section. First of all, the teacher creates a test and the students download and install the Smartphone applications. Afterwards, the teacher displays the questions on the IWB, using the automatic assessment application. At this point, the system enables the protocol that sends questions and multiplechoice answers to the mobile devices interactive application. The multiplechoice answers are then inserted in the interactive application and displayed on the mobile device screen. As mentioned before, the answers are randomly organized in each students mobile device. The communication protocol has been designed in three sequential steps: authentication, reply and session closing (see Fig. 7). In the rst step, a rst screen is shown in the Smartphone display. The student needs to login using an ID and a password. Typically in Spain the National Identity Number (DNI) or the student record are used as identication. These data are validated with the student database stored at the teachers computer. If this ID is correct, the system sends authorization to the student mobile. At this point, the student can start the interactive test. In the second step, the questions and choices are sent to the mobile devices interactive application. The questions and answer choices are displayed in random order. The student chooses the answers. These answers are sent to the ITT to be evaluated. The answers are sent in a special packet. Each answer related to a question is labeled with the ID of the user. In the last step, once the student has answered all the questions, the session is closed. In this step, the packet has a logoff notication labeled with the student identier. At this point, the automatic assessment process begins. The system evaluated in real time the answer of each student. For this evaluation, the system uses the correct templates of a specic test stored at the database. These results can be shown in class using the View results of the Teachers Software Application (see Fig. 3). Also, the results can be graphically displayed, giving fast visual information and a global view of the general performance of the students in the test. Moreover, the information for the feedback to the student is shown in real time. Finally, when the teacher has the results they can make different groups of work for new evaluations. The teacher can use the ITT to choose different evaluations according to results of student in order to improve their learning process. Security Aspects of the Interactive Test While performing the tests, we must take into account the security aspects of the system to avoid some problems: access to interactive test without permission of the teacher, false identication, copying among students or queries to access information sources, which are not allowed. Figure 7 Sequence diagram of the communication protocol used between the smartphones or mobile handsets and the teachers computer in the evaluation system. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.] 6 RODRIGUEZ-SANCHEZ ET AL. The interactive application has been designed with several special requirements to avoid security problems. Students cannot start the test until the teacher decides to start the test and the duration of it. When the teacher chooses the Start Test from the Teachers Software Application or ITT, the students will have access to the interactive test. At any other time, the access to the system of evaluation will be restricted. Another requirement is that the students have to identify with the system using their ID, which is an identication code of each student. As mentioned above, if this ID does not exist, the students will not have access to the interactive test. Therefore, the application uses an authentication process at the beginning of the test. We are working on issues to avoid personality spoong. The students only can use one Smartphone in the class. After the end of the exam, the system will not let students make the test again during the following 30 min. The teacher can congure or change this number. Thus, this mechanism avoids the student to make different tests on behalf of different students. The problem of copying among students has been solved using a random questions and answer system. All students have an interactive application with the same template, however is lled with questions and answers in random way. This random process has been done in order to prevent students from having the same order of questions and answers. This mechanism facilitates the work of copy detection. Finally, the access to external resources is not allowed. It was necessary to implement some functionality to avoid that the interactive application could run in background when the test has started. When the exam has started for each student, the running application cannot be stopped, and another applications cannot be opened or launched in second plane. All the students have the same time to answer all the questions; therefore, after this time, the application will be closed for all entire students at the same time. This requirement is important because in another web based platforms such as Web CT or Moodle [19] students may have access to all resources of Internet during the test. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION In this work, we have proposed a systemthat automates the process of continuous assessment, according to the ESHE, with no extra cost. It increases the students motivation, using the possibilities and capabilities of combining traditional learning with the use of mobile devices such as Smartphones. The system has been developed to make multiplechoice tests. Although this type of assessment is only partial, it could provide information and help for the continuous learning process and attendance control process. The system and interactive test are very easy to use; therefore teachers can make weekly or monthly assessment. Interactive tests could be about extra activities, theoretical problems or laboratories. Thus, this mechanism allows new ways of feedback in the learning process for the teacher and the student. Teachers optimize their time in order to improve their contents. Teachers can learn in real time what concepts are more difcult, therefore returning to explain these concepts in more detail. Moreover, students can also be aware of their own level of learning, going through the results of tests. Students can immediately know the correct answers after the end of the tests. Besides, it can be an incentive for students, who can see their daily progress. Case Studies The basic system has been tested and validated experimentally in various contexts at Rey Juan Carlos University (URJC). It has been validated in subjects of different Degrees with different links with ICT, as the Environmental Engineering Degree or the Chemical Engineering Degree to which ICTare merely tools. This has shown that specic knowledge of ICT is not required, rather than user level management system. Due to this, the system could be implemented in other scenarios such as schools or colleges. On the one hand, the system has been validated in several seminars of the Department of Electronics during 2012 and 2013 in Electronics Conferences in the URJC. There were an average of 98 students, similar to the existing number in most degreelevel courses. First, the Attendance Control Application section has been used in different slots to monitor the attendance of students to the seminars and conference during this conference. Second, it was testing the Interactive Teaching Table to make questions about the conferences. Related to Attendance Control Application, in contrast to the conferences during 20102011, the average time to register and monitor the attendance was decreased in 74%. Using traditional methods to monitor this issue took 3060 min for 100 students every slot of the conference; each conference has three slots of time. Therefore, this control method is more efciency and more autonomous. In the test, students had to answer a series of questions about the previous talks. Each question was associated with eight answers, of which only one was correct. It was found that the system takes little time to gather the questions/answers. The results of this test can are shown in the Interactive Teaching Table and on the IWB (see in Fig. 4). In addition to the functional testing of the system, an opinion poll was carried out by using the system, in which students had to answer questions about the organization, the talks and the usability of the system. An evaluation of the opinions could be obtained in real time thanks to the graphical statistics generated by the system. On the other hand, another implementation of the platform was successfully tested in different degrees for weekly and monthly evaluation. The rst implementation was in three Telecommunication Engineering Degree; over a total of 2068 students there were 93%of students with Smartphones. The second academic test was for Environmental Engineering Degree, where 52 of 72 students had a Smartphone. Whereas traditional test marking may take 12 h, the interactive tests took an average of 17 min. Results were automatically stored in a database. A third implementation of the platform was successfully tested in three not Engineering Degree; an average of 2089 students there were 98% of students with Smartphones. The second academic test was for Environmental Engineering Degree, where 52 of 72 students had a Smartphone. The interactive tests took an average of 18 minutes. Results were automatically stored in a database. Further testing of the system will be held in the Degrees until the end of this academic year in close collaboration with teachers of our Department. Gathered results about the developed system will be analyzed and evaluated. At the end of the year, students who passed the exams were incremented in 30% in contrast to three previous years. Besides, there are two important things related to functionali- ty of the system: security and publication of results. These aspects are described bellow. AN OPEN-SOURCE TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEM FOR REAL-TIME ASSESSMENT 7 Collection, Evaluation and Publication of Results Related to the security, as we described before, we implemented mechanisms in the mobile application to avoid copies with resources from Internet using the connectivity of mobiles. The application was designed to avoid second plane or opening another applications while the students are making the exams. In the current systems of evaluation, the teacher invests long time in the test collection, evaluation and publishes the results. This system aims to decrease timeconsuming tasks such as marking many tests, allowing the teachers to focus on measuring the students progress. The teacher does not need to collect data since the system does it automatically and in realtime. This is an important change because using our solution, the main task for the teacher is not the evaluation, but the improve of the contents, activities, etc. Figure 8 shows the average time to print, distribute, collect and evaluate exams of students. In the rst case, all stages are taken 1 h and a half for an average of one hundred students. We need more time to collect and to evaluate all the exams. In the second case, all stages are taken 17 min the same number of students. The system collects exams automatically. As described above, the automatic generation of a statistics, notes and the complete record of all results in a database minimize timeconsuming tasks of teacher. The recorded data in a database (results) can be graphically displayed, giving fast visual information and a global view of the general performance of the students. DISCUSSION We collected different data from students about the feedback of this kind of evaluation with our system. We analyzed case of students where theirs teachers usually use a traditional method. We evaluated in four kinds of class according to number of students in class (less 30 students or more than 30 students) and engineering or not engineering. According to the Table 1, the perception of students was successfully using our system. The system is designed to operate in the same way regardless the number of students per class. The maximumnumber of students being assessed is limited by the specications of the WiFi router in this class (each class should have the WiFi router and the ITT system for the teacher). For example, using a standard router, the system can work with up to 250 students. Results show that two items characterize our system: low cost and a better feedback for the teacher and the students. On the one hand, the students usually use Smartphones or laptops in their daily activities. Besides, the most institutions of education provide WiFi connection in their class. Therefore, it is not necessary to incorporate additional devices or modify the existing infrastructures. On the other hand, at the end of the year, the rate of students who pass exams is better thanks to the motivation of knowing the results in realtime (30% more than traditional systems). This is because a formative feedback is an important issue of formative assessment systems. The students do not need wait weeks or months to know about their progress in the course. Results show Figure 8 Results of the average time to assessment process using the present proposal. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.] Table 1 Evaluation of the System in Different Class Degree Easy of use Usefulness Satisfaction Learning feedback Engineering (Group 1: less 30 students) 4.5 4.6 4.4 4.7 No engineering (Group 1: Less 30 students) 4.3 4.6 4.7 4.5 Engineering (Group 1: More 30 students) 4.6 4.7 4.5 4.9 No engineering (Group 1: More 30 students) 4.2 4.8 4.7 4.8 8 RODRIGUEZ-SANCHEZ ET AL. that the students who have actively participated in the experiment have obtained better academic performance. We can conclude that mobile devices are a tool to improve the educational resources and assessment. To sum up, this kind of systems help students to resolve learning difculties related to monitoring of their progress and optimizing the overall learning process. Personalized feedback has been identied as a very powerful method in different studies [20]. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH This work proposes a new technique for automated and realtime assessment suitable for large groups of students. Some problems for assessment process have emerged since the adoption of the ECTS. There are problems related to average time to monitor attendance, prepare exams and to evaluate exams. In many cases in Spain, the ratio of students per teacher is not adequate to follow the new methodologies in education. The proposed system is a complete solution that integrates ICTs in education to solve these problems. This system has been developed in order to provide both students and teachers with the necessary tools for a good interaction between them. Results show that there are considerable advantages using this system, especially if we consider the problem associated with the number of students per class, which is present in many courses. A sustainable and economically viable solution has been presented, which also encourages participation in class, allowing personalized, interac- tive and realtime participation and evaluation of the students. It also helps the teacher to meet the educational work that requires continuous evaluation in the ESHE. It makes use of existing infrastructure in typical classes (projectors, computer, etc.) and the great expansion of Smartphones, so popular and widespread among students. The system aims to decrease timeconsuming tasks for the continuous assessment and the attendance control. The teacher does not need to collect data since the system does it automatically and in realtime. In addition, the teacher can concentrate on preparing better the lessons, because evaluation work would be reduced considerably. The students do not need to wait many time for their marks. They can know their marks immediately after the exam. The motivation for the students is better than traditional systems. The results can be graphically displayed, giving fast visual information and a global view of the general performance of the students in the test. It concludes that mobile devices can help to improve the access to education resources and new systems of attendance control and evaluation. For example, in high schools could be cheaper use Smartphones instead of deploying PCs in each student in a high school. The platform is being improved in order to make it more versatile. Despite its high penetration in society, it is necessary to think about the possibility of students without a Smartphone. The system is also designed for integration into a portable desktop computer. This system could be installed in the PCs of the university to incorporate this innovative solution for teachers. Some other functionality are being developed, such as showing the individual evaluation in the Smartphone once the test is nished. Moreover, as mentioned in this paper, it is necessary to include more anticopy capabilities. The modularity of the system allows to change some parameters of the system in order to offer new possibilities of learning. With the current system, the application shows several answers, choices, for the same question. Students can choose one. Another possibility is that the templates could be changed to have a textbox, where students could introduce their own answer with the QWERTY of the Smartphone. Establishing an adhoc network scheme in which the router is eliminated could reduce the size of the system. Besides, thanks to the modularity of the system, the Wiimote can be replaced with a tablet PC, allowing full functionality over the digital board; moreover, an implementation similar to a tablet PC can be developed for the new tablet devices. At the current time the database is being improved in order to offer best functionality. In a future version, results might be centralized so that everyone could access them from everywhere. Furthermore, it will be interesting to implement interoperability with other platforms like Moodle [19] in order to integrate qualications into the common teaching framework. Finally, another important key is to provide a specic adaptation for people with disabilities. The system was successfully validated with reading screen software and we would like to want to validate in large groups of students with disabilities. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We acknowledge URJC (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos for this research), the Programs of Support for people with Disabilities in the URJC and ONCE (National Organization for blind people) volunteers of Mostoles (Madrid, Spain). REFERENCES [1] ECTS Users Guide, European Communities, Brussels, 2009. [2] R. Pardo, T. Gonzlez, and E. Merino, Education innovation in large groups, Proceedings. Barcelona Open Ed 2010, Barcelona, 2010. [3] M. Castro, A. 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Last visited in November 12, 2012: http://moodle.org. [20] E. Vasilyeva, P. De Bra, M. Pechenizkiy, and S. Puuronen, Tailoring feedback in online assessment: inuence of learning styles on the feedback preferences and elaborated feedback effectiveness. En Advanced Learning Technologies, 2008. ICALT08. Eighth IEEE International Conference on. IEEE, 2008. pp 834838. BIOGRAPHIES Mara Cristina RodrguezSnchez is a com- puter scientist with an interest in HCI projects, wireless system, mobile services, contextaware services and bioengineering; she is assistant professor in the Electronics Department of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Currently, she is CoIP in a project for accessibility services with the Vodafone Spain Foundation ID since 2011. The last two years, she is a responsible ID of the Division of Industrial Electronics and Applications Wireless in the Electronics Department of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Angel Torrado Carvajal is a computer engineer with an interest in mobile and telecommunication systems; he is a telecommunications engineer working on mobile technology, biomedical and bioengineering in the Electronics Department of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. He obtained his Master thesis degree with High Honors in 2012. Susana Borromeo is an electrical engineering with an interest in electronics for HCI, context aware services, digital and wireless systems, mobile applications, accessibility applications, mhealth applications, and bioengineering in the Electronics Department of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos; Currently, she is ahead of the Laboratory of Digital Circuit Design and Electronic Tech- nology of the Madrid R&D Network of laboratories in the Electronics Department of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Joaqun Vaquero is an electrical engineering with an interest in electronics for HCI, context aware services, digital and wireless systems, mobile applications, accessibility applications, mhealth applications, and bioengineering in the Electronics Department of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos; Currently, he is assistant professor in the Electronics Department of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Juan A. HernandezTamames is a bioengineer and physics with an interest in electronics for contextaware services, biomedical image and signal processing, functional magneticreso- nance image analysis, medical image manage- ment, and electronics for bioengineering; Currently, he is a Head of the Medical Image Analysis Laboratory of the Madrid R&D Network of laboratories in the Electronics Department of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. 10 RODRIGUEZ-SANCHEZ ET AL.