1. DMAS System plans/ideas
Saleh Al-shomrani
Computer Science
Kent State University
DMAS System plans/ideas
(1) Extend DMAS structure: to have 3 to 4 school sites (databases) on different servers with fully working system.
(2) Improve Test authoring support: easy and friendly interface, easy to make/take test (import/export), including formulas and geometrical objects, grading system (live review of student grades), automatic generation/distribution of test codes, etc.
(3) Integrating more external components (programs) into DMAS: geoSVG and MathEdit.
(4) Introduce complex questions: the concept of an "Answer Collection Unit". An assessment question may have one or more answer collection units.
(5) Add “Student Interface” for students to review their grades/performance.
2 minutes
01/28/2008

2. DMAS System plans/ideas (cont.)
(6) User views of tests: "Question at a time" and "Whole test" views test progress bar (design issue).
(7) Improve the live “text-messaging style” communications between teachers and their students for instructions/help.
(8) Improve the DMAS system APIs interface to other applications on the Web such as WME (improve the DMAS-WME interface), MathPASS, ORC, etc .
- Server-to-Server (i.e. from other servers such as WME server to DMAS server) or
- Client-to-Server (from an Internet browser to DMAS server).
(9) Add features and more improvements to DMAS system to generate performance statistics, to provide diagnostics and to suggest remedial materials.
(10) Put DMAS system under extensive trial in schools and collecting feedback and suggestions from teachers, students, school administrators and education experts to help me evolve DMAS. As more schools adopt WME and DMAS, the distributed nature of DMAS will be demonstrated in realistic situations.
2 minutes
01/28/2008

3. DMAS System plans/ideas (cont.)
(11) Extend automatic grading (Mathematical checking service) to include formulas, math expressions, geometry, etc.
(12) Improve the DMAS search (DMASEngine):
fast, provides suggestions, minimizes search results as possible (by keyword, grade level, question type, etc.), search for text, images, formulas, and geometrical objects (SVG). The DMASEngine dynamically can fetch information from DMAS bank databases using AJAX and XML/JSON format.
(13) MAML (Mathematics Assessment Markup Language) is an XML markup language for DMAS. To transmit assessment questions to and from DMAS system and to interact with outside systems. MAML will be used for representation/encoding of assessment questions and exams..
The XSLT style sheet for MAML (maml.xsl) will be responsible to translate MAML markup into XHTML + SVG + MathML.
01/28/2008