In general an effort to improve program quality leads to the assessment of student
learning in courses within a program. In addition at times assessment of student learning
outcomes is also one of the requirements from stakeholders, regional and other
accrediting associations 14. On the other hand it is also understood that course wise
assessment results also lead to educated decision making. Program quality improvement
is one of the justification that is acceptable and appealing to faculty members that are
resistant to any assessment activities. A thoughtful assessment design allows the program
to interpret result and its influence on student learning. To achieve program improvement
we need to precisely identify areas of improvement through assessment methods and
make effective modifications to curriculum and pedagogy 17. Traditionally, many faculty
members do not have a full understanding of assessment and its importance. For faculty,
program assessment is a term that often means lot more extra work that eventually means
resistance. Therefore, it is essential that faculty and students understand how assessment
will help improve the contents of the courses and reinforce program6. In the past it was
not un common that administrators or a group of faculty members, for the purposes of
completing accreditation cycle, are assigned the task of planning assessment activities,
collecting and analyzing assessment data, and reporting assessment results. However, to
ensure good quality program, the program must plan and execute regular checks with
long term goals15. Faculty members are now a days made more and more responsible for
contributing to the design and implementation of program assessment plans 16. These
assessment results are later used to identify program weaknesses and strengths. The focus
of this article4 is on implementing a quality assessment process and method because it is
a critical step in the chain of events leading to improved program and student learning.
Article also reports that meta assessment model was used to recognize academic
programs in which the assessment process had improved over a period of time. Through
these efforts, authors also report that program’s assessment environment and use of
available resources were the major factors resulting in program improvement.
Unfortunately, achieving any level of assessment is not an easy task, a commonly known
obstacle is faculty resistance because they feel overwhelmed by assessment work. In this
paper we present a web-based tool that is designed and developed for automating
assessment related activities. It automates test creation, grading and the final report
generation that can help save time, reduce errors and produce variety of report summaries
for better decision making. This paper discusses the design and development of a
database driven, web-based tool for generating, correcting and reporting assessment
activities.