Application of fuzzy system in assessment of practical courses: Developing an educational multimedia

To motivate learners to learn, their needs for security, belonging, and respect must be met, and they must be encouraged to make cognitive and developmental choices. In many ways, the only effective way to achieve this goal is to set up an education in which all learners feel somewhat successful. This sense of accomplishment leads to a realistic level of expectation. The feeling of success encourages the urgent need for progress and prepares success for future progress. Any method of ranking that makes learners feel defeated is irrational and destructive and damages their motivation for academic achievement. Thus, there is a need for some kind of evaluation that can help maintain motivation to be aware of the learner's strengths and weaknesses without imposing personal opinion. One of the applications of fuzzy logic is in evaluating educational functions. The expansion of fuzzy collections has extended its applications to other sciences and technologies, as it is widely used today in the fields of control, image processing, medicine, social and economic studies, and intelligence in various fields. The need for systems of measurement and evaluation that could take into account other aspects of growth as well as cognitive aspect, has been one of the challenges in education.

Method and Materials:

 This paper, using fuzzy logic measures, evaluated the performance of the multimedia production course unit for a group of 30 female students randomly selected among Allameh Tabataba’i university students who added the course unit in their sixth semester (50 people). The scoring was implemented using MATLAB software. The results were correlated with the common scoring method by Pearson correlation (0.78), which indicated strong structural validity with the fuzzy method.

The results showed that qualitative variables affecting multimedia production (subject, message design, instructional design and production skill) can be evaluated using fuzzy method possibilities. Therefore, due to the need to enhance operational and practical skills of the students in real life, it is possible to use the fuzzy system capability in instruction and evaluation so that other growth aspects of the learners such as emotional aspect, creativity or production skills will not be ignored.

It is suggested that this method be used in the evaluation of other practical courses such as designing learning environments, web-based teaching and other skills required by student-teachers. Especially in environments where the emphasis is on the learner and the students should be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their learning process. It also provides a platform to define evaluation rules with the consent of learners according to the analysis of their characteristics and needs. In this way, by maintaining motivation, one can hope to continue learning.