An Assessment Algorithm for Evaluating [627079]

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An Assessment Algorithm for Evaluating
Students Satisfaction
in e-Learning Environments
-Case Study –

Ivănescu Constantin Răzvan
313 AC

University Politehnica of Bucharest

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Content :

Content: ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ……… 2
Introduction ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. … 3
Literature review ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …………………….. 4
Material and method ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ……………….. 7
Discussion and results ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …………….. 10
Conclusion ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. … 11
References and sources ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …………… 12

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Introduction
E-learning is a type of learning in which the individual is utilizing electronic
technologies to access educational curriculum outside of a classroom. It refers to a
course, program or degree delivered completely online. It is also known as distance
education, onlin e learning, internet learning and so on.

E-learning has a lot of benefits, but there are also some limitations. Some of the
advantages are the following:
 convenience and flexibility
 it promotes active and independent learning
 the courses can be seen and heard as many times as the student: [anonimizat].
 it is more cost effective

There are also some disadvantages:
 lack of a firm framework
 compared to the face -to-face learning, the learning process is less efficient.
 absence of a learning atmosphere
 lack of human interaction
 is based on human consciousness.

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It is also used for providing programs to students who are separated by distance from
school or teachers.

Internet based learning usually fits into one of three major categories:
 self-paced indep endent study (this form of study requires the most self –
motivation because there is no one to whom the student: [anonimizat]
 asynchronous interactive (this method might not be as self -paced as the first
one but it is directed by an instructor to whom you may ask questions,
moreover it can provide social support and encouragements for individuals
and increase the total effort)
 synchronous learning (it consists in students attending live lectures via
computers and asking questions by e -mail or even in real -time chat, it is the
most interactive out of the three but they sacrifice the flexibility due to
determined lecture schedule)
There are some platforms used for e -learning such as Udemy , Teachable , Skillshare ,
The Open University etc.

Literature review
Despite the growth of e -learning environments and educ ation, the efficiency won’t
be fully utilized if the individuals will not use this system. The successful
implementation of e -learning depends on whether or not the students are willing to
adopt and accept the technology.
Volery and Lord (2000) defined e -learning as a combination of learner, faculty,
instructor, technical staff, administrative, learner support, and use of the internet and
other technologies. The success of e -learning depends on numerous circumstances,
rather than a black -white formula. This type of learning may be affected by
environment and influenced by the people who use them.
Since e -learning systems are socio -technical entities, the e -learning literature can be
reviewed under two sections: as a social entity and as a technical entity.
It is evident from previous research that the quality of an instructor is an important
determinant for an effective learning management system ( hereafter lear ning
management system ) (Khan,2005; Liaw et al., 2007) . Webster & Hackley (1997)

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claimed that, ‘instructor’ is the major aspect of e -learning. An instructor should have
enough time to interact with students in their learning process (Khan, 2005). In
parall el, Collis (1995) emphasizes the importance of the ‘instructor’ highlighting the
fact that is not the technology itself but the implementation of the technologies which
should determine its effects on learning.
Dillon and Gunawardena (1995) suggested that instructors attitudes towards
technology -mediated distance learning syste ms should be considered when
evaluating these systems .
Several researches considered learner’s perceived effectiveness as an important
indicator of an effective learning management sy stem (Piccoli, Ahmad & Ives,
2001). Interactive design is proved to be an essential factor for learning satisfaction
and success. In order to design effective e -learning environments, it is necessary to
‘understand the target group’ (Liaw et al., 2007). Le arner characteristics such as
motivation, belief, confidence, computer anxiety, fear, anxiety, enthusiasm,
excitement, embarrassment and even pride need to be identified (Konradt & Sulz ,
2001: Passerini & Granger, 2000).
There are other issues such as eth ical, legal issues and even trends, environment
issues, technological developments, popularity of the learning management system
tools , which may have a significant impact on the effectiveness of a learning system.
The importance of ethical and legal issue s on learning management systems may be
one of the primary criteria that divides a successful learning system from a mediocre
one.
As a technical entity, e -learning may encounter some issues such as system quality
and internet quality. They have a signific ant effect on an learning management
system (Dillon & Gunawardena, 1995).
The system quality can be divided in two components, the software and the
hardware . The software quality involves the responsiveness, user -friendliness,
security, stability, reliability, ease of use, well -organized design and of course the
possibility of personalization of the software.
The quality of the hardware involves electronic blackboards, online threaded
discussions boards, synchronous chat, desktop videoconferencing, earphones and
even the wellness of microphones.
The higher the quality and reliability of used technology, the higher the learning
effects will be (Hiltz, 1993).

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Content quality in e -learning depends on how well the learning environment is
designed and managed. Learners place great value on content where a quality
content is well -organized, effectively presented, interactive, clearly written, useful,
flexible, and provide appropriate degree of breath (Shee & Wang, 2008).
Holsapple and Lee -Post in their s tudy (2006) highlighted the importance of up -to-
datedness and usefulness of the content.
The course management might be one of the top priorities, entering grades in time,
making announcements on time, pre -defined structured exam evolution criteria,
enabli ng the student to feel more comfortable with the course content an resulting in
a higher retention of the knowledge and satisfaction rates.
Results of an cost comparison study for training of community health workers
indicates significant savings through using a blended e -learning approach in
compar ison to a traditional didactic training for the additional one million health care
workers needed in sub -Saharan Africa.
The training cost can be reduced up to 42% when compared to a baseline traditional
didacti c approach.
The cost savings are due to cost associated with in structor travel and class -room
training time. Further analysis point that an even bigger cost -reduction can be
obtainable by using a tablet with Wi -Fi rather than a smartphone with a data plan, at
around 67%.
Using Nigeria as an example , the cost of a total baseline training cost of 47 million
USD can be reduced to 27 million USD, in the worst scenario, and up to 15.5 million
USD.
Costs inputs will also vary depending upon the setting. Cost data used in this analysis
was from Nigeria and results will likely differ in a different setting.
Moodle and Udemy are two of the most used web learning systems which provide
the framework for course delivery in addition to ease the process of learning.
One of the most implemented systems in higher education is Moodle . Moodle is
trusted by institutions and organisations large and small, including Shell, London
School of Economics, State University of New York, Microsoft and the Open
University . The community on the Moodle platform is widely spread, it contains
around 1.62 billion courses, 160 million users and it is used worldwide in almost
every country (229). Security is one of the main concern, getting updates constantly
in order to improve i tself.

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Moodle is provided freely as Open Source software, under the GNU General Public
License. It can be used for both non -commercial and commercial projects.
The flexibility of the platform can be seen in the diversity of its availability , around
120 la nguages, but constantly expanding.
A good implementation of the Moodle platform is the one in UPB ( University
Politehnica of Bucharest: acs.curs.pub.ro) which helps students with keeping track
of deadlines, assessments, exams, even sharing didactic materia l and submitting
projects and paperwork.
Student satisfaction can be attributed to what happened in the virtual classroom, and
not to student characteristics.
Student satisfaction cannot be evaluated properly by evaluation models. Each
individual is comple x in his own way, there must be a variety of test which can
indicate the level of satisfaction of a student. One model can be based on overseeing
student’s time on each course, personalized tests based on the level of knowledge
gathered by monitoring the progress and answer time in tests with mixed types of
problems ranging from easy to difficult and maybe even problems that determine the
level of perception of unknown subjects that can be linked with the test’s subject.

Material and method

The main purpose of this study case is to determine the grade of satisfaction that
students have regarding e -learning. In order to obtain results concerning the
satisfaction of students, a questionnaire has been used . It is based on 27 questions
with grades ranging from 0 to 5, 0 meaning useless , 1 very low, 2 low, 3 average, 4
pleased and 5 very pleased as far as this experience is concerned.
The questions are divided as following: 4 about curriculum, 5 regarding the analysis
of the presentation, 6 about the assess ment, 8 concerning the time analysis of the
course and 4 about social opportunities.
In order to complete the study, the questionnaire was handed to 93 students, who
answered the questions accordingly to their experience with e -learning . The answers
that were given by the students are going to used as input data, which will generate
the output data represented by the grade of satisfaction over each section, lastly
generating a general satisfaction level to summarize the results.

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To form an opinion or reach a conclusion through reasoning and information of the
answers, two mathematical concepts were used: Euclidian distance and weighted
average.
The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most
common type of average ), except that instead of each of the data points contributing
equally to the final average, some data points co ntribute more than others. The notion
of weighted mean plays a role in descriptive statistics and also occurs in a more
general form in several other areas of mathematics.
Each data in the set is multiplied by a predetermined weight in order to determine
the importance of each data point.

𝑴=∑ 𝒅𝒊∙𝒘𝒊𝒏
𝒊=𝟏
∑ 𝒘𝒊𝒏
𝒊=𝟏 , 𝑑𝑖=𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 ,𝑤𝑖=𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔 ℎ𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒

The Euclidean distance is the "ordinary" straight -line distance between two points
in Euclidean space . Older literature refers to the metric as the Pythagorean metric.
A generalized term for the Euclidean norm is the L2 norm or L2 distance.
The formula for the Euclidean distance can be defined as:
𝑑(𝑝,𝑞)=√∑(𝑝𝑖−𝑞𝑖)2𝑛
𝑖=0
The algorithm elaborated in order to determine the level of satisfaction is the
following:
1. Calculate score for each question using the weighted average , the weight
being the number of apparitions of each grade
2. Calculate the Euclidean distance for each part of the questionnaire, for a x –
dimensional space, x being the number of questions belonging to each
category. The Euclidean distance is the current state of satisfaction and
represents the progress needed in orde r to have a successful environment.
3. The average satisfaction is calculated
4. Transform the results in percentages in order to have a better understanding
and interpretation of the current satisfaction level.

After applying the algorithm to the questionnaire , the following percentages
representing the grade of satisfaction regarding e -learning were generated:

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 Curriculum: 65, 77% (Euclide an distance of 3, 42 out of a max distance of 10)
 Analysis of the presentation: 77.58% (Euclidian distance of 2, 5 out of a max
distance of 11, 18)
 Assessment: 68,22% (Euclide an distance of 3, 89 out of a max distance of
12,24)
 Time analysis : 71,44% (Euclide an distance of 4, 03 out of a max distance of
14,14)
 Social opportunities: 55,08% (Euclide an d istance of 4, 49 out of a max
distance of 10);

The meaning and the scale of the output must be explained. Each section is named
after the category that has been proposed for evaluation. The grey scale represents
the maximum satisfaction that can be achieved , the blue scale is the achieved
satisfaction concluded from the questionnaire and the orange scale is the
difference between them.

0.002.004.006.008.0010.0012.0014.0016.00
Curriculum Analysis of the
presentationAssessment Time analysis Social opportunities
Current satisfaction Distance to achieve maximum satisfaction Total satisfaction

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Discussion and results

The data collected from the students helped realizing a solid debate about each
subject of the questionnaire. The students had been using e -learning platforms and
they brought to light its strong and weak points. For the users who are more used
with the traditional didactic approach, the e -learning platforms might not be as
likable as the students who are self -learner s.

The general results for each category point out that the students think that the social
role of the e -learning platforms is not as strong as they want it to be. From the
questionnaire it is certainly that the students find the social role of e -learning in
sharing course synthesis and some indi vidual elements from individual activities.
The only question on which they could agree on was the third. The result is nearly
below the 50% (55,08%) and shows that the platforms have to think about the social
role in the future. Nearly 1 in every 2 studen ts considers that an e -learning platform
does not have a social role.

The second lowest rating in this questionnaire appears to be the curriculum with a
disappointing 65,77%. The question with the lowest grades show that the students
expect more informati on, given the fact that students are not pleased with the
information in schools, this may be a pretty good result in comparison with the
traditional approach. E -learning platforms are relatively new, traditional teaching
has centuries of existence. Most o f the students think that internet learning is a
pleasing experience.

The assessment generated 68,22%, shows that the students expectations regarding
their grades are higher and not always the same as their teacher’s. They seem to not
like elaborating sy nthesis of their courses for solving their tasks/tests. Students
agreed on the fact that the evaluation should not be done only in one exam, but taking
into account the activity and the knowledge earned during the semester. Most of the
students think that their own synthesis of the courses should be evaluated.

Time analysis proves that all students strongly agreed that the courses should
permanently be available and that they should not be limited by anything.
Availability is one of the main principle of flexibility. E -learning offers flexibility,
platforms being able to fulfill student’s wishes. A course should not be limi ted by a
time stamp, only by the schedule of the student. The subject with the lowest grades

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was about the implication of the teacher i n e-learning, about lowering the interaction.
Students enjoy the fact that they can ask the teacher questions privately, avoiding all
the unpleasant attention in the classroom and all the anxiety. On the other hand, some
students may ask for some additiona l work when knowing that they can’t be mocked
by the other students.

Lastly, the analysis of the presentation generated a 77,57%, being the most pleasant
one for the students it proves that practical tests should be based more on the direct
interaction o f the student with the virtual environment. Students mostly agreed on
the fact that e -learning must be done in fact with a lot of visual aid, unlike in the
traditional way where most of the teaching is done by narrating.
The students must be encouraged to be more friendly with the virtual environment
by showing them the advantages of any e -learning platform.

Conclusion

The primary goal of the study was to associate a model of calculation for students’
satisfaction level as far as the e -learning system is concerned. The algorithm used
highlighted the strong and the weak points of online learning.
The Euclidean distance marks the fact that the actual system of e -learning has some
missing qualities, some fields such as the analysis of the presentation had a good
grade but statistically speaking, the social opportunities came out last , showing that
nearly half of the individuals who took the questionnaire think that there are a lot to
improve in the social category.
As expected, in order to keep up with the p ace of the traditional school, the students
need to be mainly self -learners and well disciplined. Students enjoy the interaction
with the teachers and would rather ask the teacher for advice than look up the
internet.
Nearly every country all around the world has implemented a method of e -learning
in order to exploit it’s advantages and help the students keep in touch with the
subjects that are taught. The main advantage of e -learning is it’s flexibility, leading
to a h uge cost efficiency and easy access to information. Even though there are a lot
of strong points, there are also drawbacks such as the lack of social interaction on
e-learning platforms.
It is proven that social interaction is the key factor of a success ful and well -organized
life, aspect which e -learning discourages alongside with the huge amount of time

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people spend on the internet. Interaction in the early stages of life is based mainly
on school, high school, college, even at the work place. The takeo ver of e -learning
might affect a lot of individuals on a physical level.

Consequently, e -learning has the best chances of taking over traditional learning in
the future, but at the moment, some of it’s factors are not satisfactory enough for
people to giv e up the perks of being a part of the traditional schooling system.

References and sources
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4292533/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle
https://docs.moodle.org/36/en/About_Moodle
https://people.howstuffworks.com/elearni ng1.htm
http://www.elearningnc.gov/about_elearning/what_is_elearning/
https://elearningind ustry.com/advantages -and-disadvantages -of-elearning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weighted_arithmetic_mean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_distance
Multi -dimensional students’ evaluation of e -learning systems in the higher
education context: An empirical investigation – Sevgi Ozkan *, Refika Koseler
Medical students’ perceptions of using e -learning to e nhance the acquisition of
consulting skills – Warnecke E1 Pearson S2

Prezi: https://prezi.com/view/gKlu5gGip9ZZUMNApVtz/