Deriving E-Assessment from a Competency Model

Self-assessment is a crucial component of learning. Creating effective questions is time-consuming, however, because it may require considerable resources and the skill of critical thinking. Questions need careful construction to accurately represent the intended learning outcome and the subject matter involved. There are very few systems currently available which generate questions automatically, and these are confined to specific domains. This paper presents a system for automatically generating questions from a competency framework, based on question templates, criteria for effective questions, and the instructional content and ability matrix. This makes it possible to guide learners in developing questions for themselves, and to provide authoring templates which speed the creation of new questions for self-assessment.