E-assessment is an important component of e-learning and e-qualification. Formative and summative assessment serve different purposes and both types of evaluation are critical to the pedagogical process. While students are studying, practicing, working, or revising, formative assessment provides direction, focus, and guidance. Summative assessment provides the means to evaluate a learner’s achievement and communicate that achievement to interested parties. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is a statistical method for inferring meaning from a text. Applications based on LSA exist that provide both summative and formative assessment of a learner’s work. However, the huge computational needs are a major problem with this promising technique. This paper explains how LSA works, describes the breadth of existing applications using LSA, explains how LSA is particularly suited to e-assessment, and proposes research to exploit the potential computational power of the Grid to overcome one of LSA’s drawbacks.
Content
Author and article information
Contributors
Debra Haley
Josie Taylor
Conference
Publication date:
December
2003
Publication date
(Print):
December
2003
Pages: 1-4
Affiliations
[0001]Department of Computing, The Open University,
Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, UK MK7 7AA
[0002]Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University
Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, UK MK7 7AA