Application of Fuzzy Logic in measuring students’ performance at Kaiboi Technical Training Institute

Abstract

Assessment of academic performance in whatever form, remains the only practical and veritable means of gauging students' learning outcomes. Assessment as it is used today using numerical and statistical scores have many shortcomings like: uneven scores awarded by different examiners, test area covering a sample of the syllabus, tests having measurement error, examinations being criterion referenced and not norm referenced and done within a time limit. The aim of the study was to investigate how comments are given by lecturers at Kaiboi Technical Training Institute with a view of developing a system that uses linguistic and numerical variables to measure students‟ performance. The objectives of the study were to: identify the current academic performance comments given by lecturers to classifying students‟ academic performance so as to model the data to develop a membership function, use fuzzy logic to model the membership function generated to get student‟s numeric grade, model fuzzy sets using a suitable membership function to determine a student‟s grade in linguistic variables, develop a system that uses fuzzy logic to measure student‟s performance. The study was informed by fuzzy logic theoretical framework which is a multivalued logic that allows intermediate values to be defined between conventional evaluations like true/false, yes/no, high/low, good/bad. The study used case study research design. A document review was used to get comments and numerical scores from students‟ records, the data was modelled to a Trapezoidal membership function which was used to get degree of membership and crisp values. Prototyping methodology was used to model and develop the system. Previous students‟ records were used as training data. The system developed calculates degree of membership that incorporates marks and comments in students‟ final grade and gives comments based on the student‟s performance. The output from the system showed variation in the students marks when comments are incorporated. The study has incorporated comments in measuring students‟ performance and is therefore an addition to the current knowledge on students‟ performance measurement