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Abstract

When the abstract was writing this master's work was not complete yet. Final completion: june 2018. Full text of work and materials on the topic can be obtained from the website after this date.

Content

Introduction

Constantly developing information, communication and computer technologies have a great influence on the sphere of geometrical education. This is due to the new content of professional activity, at all stages of which information and communication technologies, computer facilities and computers are used.

Geometrical disciplines of basic geometric-graphic training at the technical university include: descriptive geometry, engineering graphics and computer graphics.

Under computer graphics we will understand the technologies for creating, storing, editing and transferring electronic graphic information.

1. Topicality

In modern conditions, the role of geometric-graphic preparation is substantially increasing, as the area of application of geometric knowledge in various spheres of practical activity is constantly expanding. This is primarily due to the fact that the electronic geometric model occupies an important place in computer design technologies, which is the initial stage in the design, manufacture and operation of products, engineering structures and other structural systems. The modern design process begins precisely with the creation of a three-dimensional electronic model based on geometric data. Such a model enables the specialist to visualize the image of the future design, perform calculations, check the operability, design the production technology, check the assembly-disassembly, make design documentation, etc. At the same time, computer simulation allows you to examine the object, and monitor the results at any stage designing.

2. Goal and tasks of the research

The purpose of this work is to study the means of testing students' knowledge of graphic disciplines, to compare their functional characteristics, to study the features of testing various geometric sciences, to develop and implement their own testing system, which will allow selecting the most correct option for knowledge control in selecting a particular discipline the ability to test for remote access, will have a friendly and user-friendly interface and support system.

The achievement of this goal is accomplished by solving the following research problems:

  1. Research of application areas of the developed product;
  2. Research of existing tools for testing and controlling students' knowledge and developing their own, defining its functions and structure, forming requirements for the system from the teaching and student subject areas;
  3. Development of algorithms for the functioning of the testing system;
  4. System organization of application operation and interaction of internal modules;
  5. Application development, approbation, experimental research and comparison of the characteristics of the developed system with existing analogues.

3. Overview of researches and developments

The topic under study is popular both in the international scientific community and in the local scientific community. This is evidenced by a large number of research and development on all sorts of scientific topics.

3.1. Overview of international sources

Among the factors characterizing the current situation in the field of pedagogical control of graphic disciplines, the main one is the need to develop adequate tools for measuring and assessing the achievements of students in accordance with educational standards. Therefore, the issue of creating test software, embedded in the distance learning system, is acute in modern realities.

The development of such systems is carried out by professors and their students in a variety of departments of international universities. To one of such developments it is possible to carry scientific works of the professor of the department of Engineering and Computer Graphics Alexander Lvovich Heifetz, namely his knowledge control system called Colloquium [10].

This is an automated testing of complex tasks and other topics. Colloquium as a program written in AutoLisp, is protected by copyright certificate. The program checks the result of the student's decision of the graphic task, and not the choice of the correct answer from a number of suggested ones. This fundamentally distinguishes such a control system from popular testing today, in which the teacher's task - with five answers four times to deceive the student. In his colloquium, everything is based on 3d modeling combined with programming.

Also, the development of this kind of systems for testing knowledge in the study of graphic disciplines involved: Professor of the Department of Design, Graphics and Descriptive Geometry Alexandrova EP, Senior Lecturer Nosov K.G. and the head of this department, Doctor of Technical Sciences Stolbova ID. Their research and scientific articles emphasize the need to search for new teaching technologies corresponding to the level of development of information and communication technologies and meeting the requirements of modern design and production technologies. The analysis of the functional capabilities of information technology in the formation of geometric-graphic competencies, the ability to control and verify the knowledge received by students. The system use of the complex of information technologies for various forms of training is described [11].

3.2. Overview of local sources

At our university for many years, my research supervisor, Karabchevsky Vitaly, is engaged in the study of geometric disciplines.

The main work on the topic of knowledge control in the teaching of geometric disciplines can be called his article:Automatic generation of solutions to the problems of descriptive geometry as a means of forming standards in the testing subsystem [8].

The article deals with a certain subsystem that performs automatic generation of the answer and provides its use as a reference when verifying the results of the trainee's work. Its subsystem can be used in studying separate sections of descriptive geometry for both self-testing during independent work and for testing knowledge. This increases the reliability of the results, since the trainees will not have the opportunity to know the condition of the problem in advance, find a way to guess the answer, or otherwise deceive this system.

4. Technology of testing training systems

Within the framework of any testing, the following types of questions are commonly used [2], [4], [6]:

Questions with multiple choice. They are used more often than others. Usually, three to five answers are suggested.

Questions with an alternative answer (yes / no). They are relatively simple, which allows you to include a large number of questions in the test. Recommend them to verify the assimilation of simple information.

Questions for establishing compliance. Using them, the examiner gets the most opportunities to test the trainee's ability to establish logical correspondences.

Questions for ranking. They are used in assessing the abilities of the trainee to recognize the connections between concepts and categories, to think in an associative way. Can be applied to verify the assimilation of complex theoretical material. Their main drawback - the complexity of preparing tests.

Questions with a creative response. They reduce to a minimum the effect of guessing and make it possible to check the creative abilities of the individual. The disadvantage is the laboriousness of evaluating the correctness of the answers. In the form of computer programs, tests were first applied in the framework of the first automated training systems developed in accordance with the concept of programmable learning.

The test form of assessing students' knowledge made it possible to form feedback and significantly reduce the teacher's time spent on the test and on the initial analysis of its results.

In the very first testing programs, it was supposed to output answer variants, enter response numbers according to the user's choice and accumulate points.

There was a first division: on programs for creating tests and programs for passing tests. An important feature of such systems, in comparison with primitive testing programs, is the availability of more complex and professional interfaces, an answer analysis tool that extends the range of test tasks used, makes it possible to conduct deferred testing, automatically create equivalent test cases, etc.

Database tools allow you to use different types of non-verbal material in tasks and have in your composition two main modules: student module and teacher module. Systems of this kind are quite complex and involves the collection of data from a large number of workplaces, and only a few developers have moved to creating a network version of testing systems.

4.1. Testing of graphic disciplines

Any training consists of two main components: theoretical and practical. The theoretical component, aimed at providing students with fundamental concepts in computer graphics, it covers methods for generating graphic objects with different geometric characteristics and realistic external phenomena. For the practical component - to help and strengthen students' understanding of algorithms and methods, as well as to teach them to use and write independently effective programs on computer graphics.

In this monitoring system, the formation of test sequences is realized according to the formulated in the work of V.P. Bezpalko [3]levels of assimilation of information.

To test the quality of the assimilation of information at level I, tests that require recognition actions must be used. These are the most primitive test tasks, in which the answer lies in the very text of the question.

Test tasks of level II should be aimed at control of assimilation at the level of "reproduction", i.e. assimilation, allowing to reproduce and discuss information about objects of study without reliance on objects, from memory. A vivid example of tests of level II are substitution tests in which the word, phrase, formula, etc. are omitted.

To diagnose students' mastery of knowledge at the third level, it is necessary to develop tests containing assignments for productive activities corresponding to the level of knowledge and skills.

4.2. Modeling your own testing environment

To obtain a more reliable result on the quality of the knowledge obtained, it is proposed to use test sequences that include tasks of different levels of complexity. And the use of the simulated system greatly simplifies the formation of tasks for the input and output control of knowledge. As an input control, it is suggested to use test sequences that include the tasks of the first and second levels of assimilation, and for the output control - the mixed sequences from the tasks of the second and third levels. Test sequences containing tasks of different levels of complexity are called stair tests.

The system is based on a multiple choice test [5], [7]. As a question and answer option, graphic files are used which, in addition to figures and diagrams, can contain textual information.

The subsystem of test generation provides the following possibilities:

  1. Design of test sequences according to the scheme: subject area - question - list of answers;
  2. Presentation of each issue of the test being developed in the form of a separate on-screen dialogue, which contains complete information about the question being asked and the proposed answers;
  3. Setting the number of questions in the test, the questions in the database are delineated by the level of information assimilation, using different weight factors, so the teacher can design tasks of varying complexity for different groups of students;
  4. Setting the time allocated for testing;

Subsystem for authorized access delimits the rights of users who are allowed access to various database files.

The testing subsystem performs the task of testing in single-user mode and storing test results for further processing. It provides the following features:

  1. Identification of the user, and also selection of the test for testing;
  2. Direct carrying out of process of testing, that is issue of questions and offered answers to the screen, reading of reaction of the tested person to the proposed question (see Figure 2, where the window of the screen test dialogue is shown);
  3. Providing a return to the previous one and proceeding to the next question, as well as a test time count, after which the testing process is automatically interrupted;
  4. Work with database files (DB) tests and report databases;
  5. Displaying test results on the screen and saving them to the report DB.
Testing display

Figure 2 – Testing display

The subsystem of processing the results of testing allows you to record detailed information about each tested, it performs various selections on the fields of the database, displays the report on the screen. At the stage of processing the test results, the correct answers are counted.

The absolute score obtained as a result of testing is calculated as follows:

Absolute score formula</

Figure 3 – Absolute score formula

where: h = 1 for correct answers, h = 0 for incorrect answers, i — weights for each question, n — is the number of questions in the test.

The final evaluation is formed depending on the rating scale assigned by the teacher (designer), at the stage of the test task formation. Based on the test results, a report sheet is generated.

As a result of the experience of using this monitoring system, the following rules for preparing test tasks are formulated:

  1. It is not possible to include such variants in the list of proposed answers, which suggest ambiguity;
  2. Incorrect answers should be built on the basis of typical mistakes;
  3. Correct answers among all proposed should be placed in a random order.

Conclusion

A visually-oriented approach is necessary for teaching computer graphics, because it is set in the context of "learning in practice", and the results can be evaluated effectively through interactive testing. Well-designed interactive training programs and tests will stimulate self-study of students, providing them with an environment that facilitates the experimental. This method leads to the use of cognitive skills for self-comparison, analysis and evaluation of various teaching materials. In addition, students will develop a long-term orientation to this method of teaching.

References

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  4. Brand L. Van–Den Flexible and Distance Learning. ORT Administration Technology Department, London, 1992, 345 p..
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