The Design of Interactive Assessment-Cognitive Schema-based System: An Exploratory Study in E-learning Implementation

An e-learning website is not sufficient to fully attain the results of online education. There also is a need to align the educational objectives into the design of the assessment to improve and develop cognition, critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Previous studies have explored the potentials of the assessment models but few ventured into their implementation. Others only proposed and introduced conceptual frameworks. The implementation of these proposals, however, revealed that the question type in the assessment phase neglected to align their questionnaire formats into a cognitive schema. At present, the standard multiple-choice question is the most frequently used of the question type of e-learning assessments. However, if this type is the only format adopted by e-learning developers, then the potentially rich and embedded assessment of the computer platform can be will be given up. This paper then focuses on the design of assessment questions, which is created and guided by the hierarchical Bloom cognitive taxonomy and by utilizing rich media formats. Preliminary results conducted for four weeks show a dramatic increase in the academic performance of the students.