Developing a new mobile-based electronic grade system for schools in UAE

With today's rapid growth of information technology, the system capabilities will be endless. The new system provides many features that assist teachers record and manage students' performance assessment. By using a PDA device, teachers are capable of entering and processing student grade data into their electronic grade sheet at anytime and from anywhere. A survey was designed and conducted to assess and measure the usefulness, usability and effectiveness of the software. The results of the survey have shown that the new tool is very useful, easy to learn and use, and effective.

Background

The Internet has significantly changed the way we live, learn, work, and communicate. In today's digital information age, where e-education, e-business, e-commerce, e-government, e- communication, e-banking, e-entertainment and other forms of electronic services are growing and becoming more and more mainstream, all of these services share two common technologies; the Internet and mobile telecommunication which are used as a platform to deliver the above services. The Internet has really revolutionized teaching and learning in many positive and effective ways and Internet based education is quickly becoming the predominant technology in education today.

The availability of software tools to assist teachers within the Middle East and the Gulf Region are very rare. There are few applications and services available, but mostly for administrative and personnel use. The development of the M-Grade system will assist teachers in recording student grades, generating reports and even updating information at any given time and in any given place. The tool is also intended to provide teachers with new capabilities such as transferring assessment data between teacher-to-student, teacher-to-parents and teacher-to-school administration and to be able to achieve this in optimal time. The new system will have many attractive features that will be useful and helpful to most teachers in the UAE.

Assessment of Students' Learning

Assessment has always been an important part of a teacher's work with students. By assessment we mean teachers evaluating the work of their students. According to Angelo (1991), 'classroom assessment is a simple method faculty can use to collect feedback, early and often, on how well their students are learning what they are being taught. The purpose of classroom assessment is to provide teachers and students with information and insights needed to improve teaching effectiveness and learning quality'.
Teachers assess their students in many ways such as tests, exams, projects, presentations or observation. The purpose of using assessment according to Angelo (1991) is to help the teachers to use the feedback to make changes in their teaching. On the other hand the teacher can show the students the feedback and share it with them so it will be easier to find their weakness and to improve their learning strategies. The assessment not only helps teachers to decide about the learning process, but also it helps them to increase student learning and boost motivation. The learning is associated with the assessment, and it has been shown that for the class that uses an assessment strategy, students in the class learn more than students in the classes that do not use ac assessment process.

Technology in Education

Technology now has an important place in many classrooms. For example, over the past 13 years the United States has spent more than $19 billion on developing information technology in local schools and classrooms (Wilson, D. Janell 2003). According to the T.H.E journal, the results of a survey they conducted showed that 86% of teachers agreed that in-class computers improve academic performance, and surprisingly 74% also said that computers increase students' attention in class, something which was really hard to achieve when they taught by using old methods (Rother, 2003). The new equipments of technology have changed the way of teaching. It has affected the teaching style and it makes the teacher better able to transfer the information to the students by using different types of technology. Sometimes the visual parts attract students' attention, and as well, it was suggested that the student will use the new technology in their learning process, so they can present their work on screens. Extended integration of technology into professional education courses, beyond the required opening technology classes, or as a replacement for stand alone classes, may encourage teachers to design learning experiences that incorporate a variety of technological components (Wilson, 2003). Handhelds have the potential to have a positive impact on student learning, and teachers will continue to use handheld devices in the future.

PDA Devices

PDA stands for Personal Digital Assistant. PDA's are handheld devices that were originally designed as personal organizers, but have become much more versatile over the years. PDAs can be used for many purposes such as calculating, accessing the Internet, sending and receiving e-mail, as a radio or stereo, video recording, playing computer games, recording notes, or as an address book, as a GPS and using it as a spreadsheet, as well as using it as a clock and calendar. All these features which are called PIM (Personal Information Manager) help the user in his personal duties and make them more organized.

M-Grade System Architecture

The M-grade system is built on client-server architecture with student profile, student grade data, update module, data processing and report generator performed on the server side, while the user interface and other related computing are done on the client end, as depicted in Figure 1.



A client contains a communication unit and a graphical user interface (GUI) component. The communication unit performs activities that correspond to the server's communication unit. Meanwhile, the GUI presents all reports to the user and accepts commands such as performing calculations, viewing student assessment portfolios, creating grade reports as well as updating student profile and grade data.

M-Grade Development and Operations

The new electronic grade sheet program was created to assist teacher's record, process, maintain and manage students' learning assessment grade data. The new system has the following features and operations.

Read student profile & grade Data
The program reads the student data which is maintained in a centralized database, it includes students' profiles and all related detailed grades data. To retrieve students' data the teacher should select the action command as indicated in the program interface with the option of editing any data item using the soft keyboard, as exhibited in Figure 2.

Calculate the final grade
After reading the students' data the teacher can edit the data by changing the grades, adding new grades or deleting grades by using the keyboard. In the desktop computers you already
have a keyboard but when using the PDA you can also use the keyboard as an external device plugged into the PDA or you can use the keyboard inside the PDA as shown in Figure 2. After editing the user will press the Next button which is 'Calculate the final grade'. As a result it will calculate the final grades for all the students in this classroom. The final grades will appear in the Final Grade box with bold and black font, so it catches the user's eyes.



Generate grade report
The next step can be calculating the final grades, where the teacher can select the appropriate command to generate the final students' grade reports, with various data contents and optional formats. The final reports may contain other identification data such as school's name, teacher's name, grade level, students' names, detailed assessment grades, and their final grades.

This report can be sent from the PDA to the student, parents, advisors, and school administration by using the Multimedia Service MMS or regular email. This feature gives the teacher the accessibility and flexibility to send the report remotely even if the teacher is away from office. This also is intended to enhance the communication between the student, parents and school administration. The teacher can print out the final report through the printer by connecting it with the USB port, or wireless by using the Bluetooth technology. It can help the teachers as well in printing the final report through the administration's printer if they need a hard copy of the report.

Update and Save new changes
The system will also save the new changes the teacher makes when entering new data items or modifying an existing data. Changes will be reflected and saved automatically in the centralized database.

Survey Design

Creating the survey was a simple task. It contains a list of measurable questions to assess the usefulness of the tool to the teacher, the user interface design, functionality, the features they like the most and the features they like least. The format of the survey was multiple choice questions; each requiring a response on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is strongly disagree and 5 is strongly agree. The survey also included a section for additional comments, suggestions, and new features they would like to add. The purpose of the survey is to assess the usefulness and effectiveness of the new tool and how much teachers would accept to use the M-grade system on a PDA device. It was also geared towards finding the functions and features which were liked by the teachers.

Discussion of Results

In the study, we tried to reach many teachers from the Dubai schools area to get their opinions and feedback regarding the usability and functionality of the new grade system based on their experiences. Teachers from different background, subject area, and grade levels were selected to participate in the assessment. The teachers represented different disciplines such as English, Arabic, Islamic Studies, Arabic, Science, Computing and Math.

Each participant was given a small presentation to show him/her how the M-Grade works and how it is used. For consistency, each participant was provided and used the same PDA device. Each teacher was given an ample time to use and explore the features of the new tool. Then each was asked to complete a survey, right after the session. The survey consisted of four sections, three of them addressed the usability, user interface design, and functionality as well as a fourth section to capture their comments and suggestions and the features they would like to add into the program.

In terms of usability of the M-grade, 95% of the teachers responded strongly to this and found it very helpful, and 85% responded that they found the program easy to use, learn and operate. See Figure 3, which illustrates how teachers responded to the usability aspect.



As far as functionality is concerned, 85% of the teachers strongly agreed that it can perform all the functions and calculations that can be done on paper format. In addition, 90% strongly agreed that the program respects students' privacy. See figure 5, which illustrates how teachers responded to the functionality aspect. Lastly, 65% of the teachers would like to see new action command to give them the flexibility to add and delete columns from the main grade sheet.



For the open ended questions, participants stressed the importance of M-grade; specifically it would add the following qualities to the school grading process which are efficiency, accuracy, flexibility and grade accessibility, less papers, and mobility. Furthermore, the ability to change the program's user interfaces into Arabic language.

Conclusion

Assessment has always been an important part of a teacher's work with students. In the UAE there are few electronic systems available for the teachers to keep track of student learning. Most tools that are available in the market are designed for administrative functions. In this article, a new grade system has been developed and tested to assist teachers in recording and managing students' learning assessment. M-Grade is a web-based grade book that simplifies traditional or standards-based grading, assessment, and report generation. M-Grade data is centralized is intended to enhance communication between the teachers, students, parents and the school administration. Administrators, teachers, parents, and students can all have access to the same real-time data. M-Grade is designed to be intuitive and easy to use. With the interface you can create grading components assigned to a weight between 0 and 100 percent. M-Grade also saves teacher's time, and allows teachers to fully access their electronic grading sheet anytime, and anywhere. The grades can be updated online regularly, and a report can be generated on demand. A survey was designed and conducted to assess and measure the system usefulness and effectiveness. The results of the survey have shown that the new tool was very useful, friendly to learn and use, and effective.