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QUASI
QUASI (`a Question-Answer System for the Internet') is a general-purpose computer-aided assessment
and self-assessment system. It enables a non-specialist tutor to design sets of questions
that will be presented to a student by the medium of a Web browser. Students answer
the questions, and receive feedback and a score. Exercises can be set by Web browser
forms, or by writing text files in a well-documented format. QUASI supports multiple
choice, true-false and `click the image' questions, as well as free-form text entry.
It incorporate a pattern-matching strategy to classify free-form answers according
to templates supplied by the tutor.
Although the use of Web browsers for assessment is no longer new technology,
QUASI was, I believe, the first such system to be developed (at least in the
UK). There are now commercial products for Web-based assessment, but
QUASI continues to outperform them in a number of areas. Specifically,
QUASI incorporates a novel form of `confidence scoring', in which the
student learns to distinguish guesses from real knowledge. It also
allows free-form answers, and can be configured to distinguish complex
input patterns.
Although it was useful in its day, and QUASI is still in use, I consider
it effectively to be obsolete. I am now interested in more sophisticated
methods of computer-aided learning, including the use of conversational
agents for automated tutorials (more information available
here).
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