Adding adaptive assessment capabilities to an e-learning system

In this paper, we present EX-COFALE, an extension to an existing open-source, Web-based adaptive e-learning system, namely COFALE. COFALE, although offers facilities for adaptive content presentation, adaptive use of pedagogical devices and adaptive communication, it lacks facilities for adaptive student assessment. EX-COFALE remedies this deficiency of COFALE by allowing for automated test creation and assessment based on the students´ knowledge information. To this end, COFALE has been modified to allow for representation of associations between test questions and learning concepts. Also, assessment is made at two levels, the concept and the goal level, taking into account the difficulty level of the questions. To technically achieve the above, expert systems technology is used