Ontology-based e-Assessment for Accounting Education

Abstract

This summary reports on a pilot of a novel, ontology-based e-assessment system in accounting. The system, OeLe, uses emerging semantic technologies to offer an online assessment environment capable of marking students' free text answers to questions of a conceptual nature. It does this by matching their response with a ‘concept map’ or ‘ontology’ of domain knowledge expressed by subject specialists. This article describes the potential affordances and demands of ontology-based assessment and offers suggestions for future development of such an approach.

Key Words:

• Accounting
• e-assessment
• ontology

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and the International Association for Accounting Education & Research (IAAER) under a program of research to support the work of the International Accounting Education Standards Board (IAESB). The authors would like to acknowledge the advice and guidance they have received from the funders in the course of this work. In addition, we would like to thank our research partners at the University of Murcia, especially Dr Jesualdo Tomás Fernández-Breis and Dr Maria del Mar Sanchez Vera; Rob Crichton, who worked as a project research assistant at Liverpool John Moores University; and the staff and students of the School of Business and Law of Liverpool John Moores University.

Notes

1 Details of the report can be located at http://www.iaaer.org/research_grants/IAAER_ACCA_InformingIASB_2ndRd.htm