A framework for e-assessment on students’ devices: Technical considerations

Abstract

This paper presents FLEX, a framework for electronic assessment on students’ devices. Basic requirements to such a framework and potential issues related with these requirements are discussed, as well as their state of the art. Afterwards, the client-server architecture of FLEX is presented, which is designed to meet all requirements previously identified. The FLEX client and the FLEX server are discussed in detail with focus on utilized technologies and programming languages. The results of first trials with the existing prototype are discussed in relation to the identified basic requirements. Thereafter, assessment of programming courses is discussed as use case of FLEX, which makes use of the extensibility of client and server. The paper closes with a summary and an outlook.