Automatic Evaluation of Studentâ??s Performance in Online Laboratories

Abstract

Online laboratories are increasingly being deployed in traditional on-campus as well as Web-based distance-learning courses (distance education) around the world. An online laboratory generally will consist of several experiments (a module). Evaluation of studentâ??s performance and grading in laboratory courses involves quiz/viva-voce examinations, checking of experimental data and the submitted laboratory report. The students submit online laboratory report containing experimental data, interpretation, and extracted parameters. The submitted values are automatically compared and graded, with the grading criteria decided by the instructor along with the option of awarding credit for the particular experiment session. In this paper, we describe in detail a proposal on the design and prototype implementation of automatic student performance evaluation and grading system in NetLAB laboratory management system (LMS) currently in use for undergraduate and graduate online laboratories at IIT Kharagpur.