I am ready for the fade ... into my own parade. Its just a shadow youre
seeing ... that he's chasing..
Hey Mr . Tambourine man ..Play a Song for me..
lyrics.. Bob Dylan
"Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t"
<rem642b@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
message news:rem-2008jan05-008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > From: "WALLYWORLD" <ran...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> > I want to point out that the use of internet involves a cache of
> > the data.
>
> That's one of those aspects that is usually transparent, so it
> shouldn't be mentionned unless you have some really good reason.
>
> > Although there may be two ends of the connection, there may not
> > be a connection.
>
> You mean there isn't a real-time end-to-end connection? Of course
> there *must* be an end-to-end virtual connection when using HTTP.
> (End-to-end means client-to-server. There needn't be a
> user-to-database virtual connection in real time. User-to-client,
> client-to-server, and server-to-database, can be relatively
> asynchronous to some degree, while each of the three is internally
> synchronous.)
>
> > I know a web database course with a working model of a test
> > taking system, Each test has many questions, and there are several
> > tests to take. Each question is multiple choice.
>
> That's garbage! With manually taken test on mark-sense paper, of
> course multiple-choice is the only feasible way. But with
> InterNet-based client/server tests, short-answer fill-in with
> automatic guidance toward correct spelling of correct answer with
> partial points-off for such corrections needed, is much much better
> than multiple choice. There's really no excuse for pretending we
> have a batch system of submitting decks of mark-sense cards, when
> we actually have an interactive Web client/server system.
>
> Guessing multiple choice by elimination is nowhere as good as
> short-answer fill-in in determiming whether somebody really knows
> the correct answer to a question. Multiple choice ****fts the
> thought process away from actually knowing the answer, to learning
> heuristics for eliminating obviously false answers the guessing
> randomly from the rest, which distracts from actual learning.
> Fill-in restores the emphasis in learning the correct answer and
> testing whether the student really knows the correct answer even if
> slightly misspelled.
> English: "perchance"
> Spanish: "*** casualidad"
> Don't you think it rather defeats the lesson if five multiple
> choices are given instead of the user just typing the correct
> 3-letter word?
> English: "The word of the day"
> Spanish: "La palabra *** d{i'}a"
> Ditto?
> English: "my parents love each other"
> Spanish: "mis padres ** aman")
> Ditto (2 letters)?
> English: "forever"
> Spanish: "**** siempre"
> Ditto (4 letters)?
> I actually think a person who knows the correct answer is more
> likely to make a mistake matching the letter A,B,C,D,E with correct
> answer than just typing the short answer in directly, and typing
> directly is faster than scanning multiple choices too.
>
> > There are of course right answers, and wrong answers associated
> > with each question.
>
> With short-answer fill-in there is no need to set up strawmen wrong
> answers. Just store the secret correct answer and be done with it!
> Question goes database->server->client->user
> Student's answer goes user->client->server
> Correct answer goes database->server
> Comparison occurs on server, which is secure against student's
eavesdropping.
>
> > He uses the Access database to store the questions, and answers.
>
> Yes. (And for computational questions, such as solving algebraic
> equations, which are parameterized in real time, the database would
> store an algorithm for computing the correct answer, or a one-way
> algorithm for comparing correct/student answer without first
> computing the correct answer.)
>
> > But in your model, you could store the connections to the web
> > pages which contain sets of answers, and indexed questions (by test).
>
> Note that for a final exam we'd need some way to prevent the
> student from cheating by doing a Google search to find the Web
> pages containing the Q/A pairs and then simply copying and pasting.
> Google Images keyword-tagging game provides a start to a solution:
> Suppose we have native English speakers learning Spanish, and
> native Spanish speakers learning English. One fact about foreign
> languages is that it's easier to translate from foreign to native
> language than vice versa. Another fact is that supplying one
> missing word is easier than supplying the entire translation. So
> here's my idea for a "final exam" which can't be cheated: Random
> text in language A is picked from the Web. It's passed to native
> speakers of language A to proofread. If a vast majority accept it
> as valid, it goes to the next step, else it's rejected. Natives of
> language B are asked to translate from language A. If a vast
> majority agree on the translation, then it goes to the next step,
> else it's rejected. Natives of either language are asked to fill in
> just one missing word of their foreign language, given full text of
> their native language. Grading "on the curve" per Shannon entropy
> is performed. I.e. if 100% of the students get it correct, in both
> directions A->B and B->A then it's regarded as "too easy". If just
> one person gets it wrong, that person gets a big bad mark while
> everyone else gets a small good mark. If just a few get it right,
> they get big good credit while everyone else is penalized only a
> little. If there's a spread from exactly correct answer through
> slightly misspelled correct ansers to completely wrong answers,
> partial credit is given. Since all translations are on-the-fly via
> the proofreading game and the full-translation test, it's very
> unlikely that the translation pair already exists online, and on
> the average it wouldn't be profitable for any student to try to
> cheat by using Google to look for the translation pair. As a extra
> protection, the test-maker system might explicitly do a Google
> search for each translation pair, and also ask BabelFish for
> translation, just to make sure neither affords a way to cheat. Of
> course for the *final*exam*, students would be locked in a room
> with no access to cellphone or any other way to cheat. Then they
> could be given 100% questions they already studied online, and
> nearly 100% correct answers could be expected to match what the
> student claimed to demonstrate online.
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