A Rule-Based System for Test Quality Improvement

To correctly evaluate learners’ knowledge, it is important to administer tests composed of good quality question items. By the term “quality” we intend the potential of an item in effectively discriminating between skilled and untrained students and in obtaining tutor’s desired difficulty level. This article presents a rule-based e-testing system which assists tutors in obtaining better question items through subsequent test sessions. After each test session, the system automatically detects items’ quality and provides the tutors with advice about what to do with each of them: good items can be re-used for future tests; among items with lower performances, instead, some should be discarded, while some can be modified and then re-used. The proposed system has been experimented in a course at the University of Salerno.