From evaluation to learning: Some aspects of designing a cyber-university

A corollary of the openness and emphasis on learning is that the student is permitted to continue requesting drill items until the system reports a grade which is satisfactory to the student. An obvious resulting challenge is how such a grade should be computed so as to reflect actual knowledge at the time of computation, entice the student to continue and simultaneously be a clear indication for the student. To name a few methods, a grade can in principle be computed based on all available answers on a topic, on the last few answers or on answers up to a given number of attempts, but all of these have obvious problems.