This paper contains recommendations and rules how to evaluate students and how to lead practical exercises in cisco academy. The paper presents close view of various evaluation criteria, underlines constructive evaluation methods and emphases the effort of reaching higher educational results. We summarize existing evaluation criteria which are in fact insufficient for complex results evaluation. We therefore define a new set of criteria which can contribute to fairer and clearer evaluation. Increasing occurrence of students using unfair methods is a current trend.
Therefore it is important to create such rules of evaluation, which can eliminate such behavior. These recommendations should help to increase quality and credit of cisco academy and reach good level of knowledge for cisco students.
Standard approach to evaluation of learning process includes basic testing (one per lesson /one after each chapter), final exam (electronic test) and skills exam and some others. It is teacher’s responsibility to assign weight to each activity during semester that is evaluated in the student’s gradebook. Table 1 shows weight percentage used in our regional academy in Žilina.
Activity CCNA 1 CCNA 2 and higher
Basic testing 1 % (13 tests) 3 % (11 tests)
Case study 3 % –
Skills exam 3 % 37 % (incl. oral exam)
Final exam 69 % 30 %
Custom score 12 % (oral exam)
–
Table 1
You can see that basic tests during semester have very low weight, only 1%. However, according to our experience, this weight is adequate and in place. During these tests students are less supervised than during a final exam. They tend to cheat more often and use illegally studying materials, but they don’t understand solved problematic on the adequate level. We have also observed that students copied the test before the lesson, worked it up at home and brought it completed on a little paper or in the electronic way (for example as notepad plain text) for the lesson. Students are aware that testing software contains only finite amount of questions (in many cases not much), they can be easily broken. So, basic testing is a good tool for students to evaluate their knowledge but the test results do not correspond to the students real knowledge of the problem, therefore we are using small weight.
Case study is very good method how to improve students creativity. In CCNA 1 course students have to design a network for real rooms or part of buildings.
They have to draw building plans with dimensions, mark network cabling, select suitable active and passive networking devices and so on. This activity is mandatory for all students and has the weight of 3%. In
CCNA 2 and higher courses the skills exam is a sufficient demonstration of student’s knowledge. We score this activity with highest weight (e.g. 37% in
CCNA 2 semester).
In addition to e-learning methods, we are using oral exam. It is often rated by students as the most difficult part of the evaluation. It is many time the best mirror of
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student’s knowledge and understanding of problematics. The only disadvantage of such exam is the human factor. Teacher is never objective enough in evaluation, because he knows the students personally.
In CCNA 1, we assign to oral exam (evaluated in custom scores) the weight of 12%, in CCNA 2 and higher the oral exam is included in the skills exam.
In our university individual CNA semesters are taught within the frame of optional semester courses called „Computer Networks 1 – 4“. As we need to evaluate the students at the end of the semester with the marks going from A to FX (A, B, C, D, E, F, FX), we are using assignment depicted in table 2.
A <96% – 100%>
B <92 % – 96 %)
C
D
<88 % – 92 %)
<84 % – 88 %)
E <80 % – 84 %)
FX <0 % – 80 %)
Table 2
Negative aspect of e-learning is the danger that all education is left on the students. They must study curriculum, lab manual and solve problems alone. They loose motivation and therefore they tend to cheat and find out how to study „easier“ but unfortunately less effectively.
In summary the basic testing, when students make tests after each lesson, is not effective in this case. It does not mirror the state of student’s knowledge. So the question is how we can increase the motivation, enhance the standard evaluation methods, so that the learning process will be effective and will produce best quality students.
During the last courses given by our RCNA we have made successful use of oral exams at the end of semesters. Thus the student’s knowledge was not evaluated simply by the final exam but as well as by teacher’s oral examination. It is advisable to publish the questions or the question sets prior to the examination.
It forces students to prepare better for their assessments and prevents to simply rely on test questions that may appear already familiar to them.
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Throughout the semester we also question students at the beginning of the lessons. We have encountered one negative aspect of passively studying the curricula.
Students are unable to see the relations between the information presented in individual chapters of the curricula. They simply learn a given chapter and pass the corresponding test. Unfortunately there are no questions in the test that reference previous chapters to assess the student’s knowledge from previous modules.
Therefore students loose a lot of information between chapters and do not develop logical relations between studied information.
These were the reasons to start oral examinations during our lessons. Each student is given one or two short questions that he/she should answer. The teacher can record their success in the Custom Score column in the Gradebook. Alternatively, the teacher may give a few questions only to randomly selected students. In the case the student does not show sufficient knowledge, the instructor may record this fact and take it into account at the end of the semester. The final grade may thus be decreased.
Effective methods, we have been using, are questions that require from students to make use of the board and illustrate the answer. They are good exercises for all students as they may follow the whole answering process and actively take part in it.
There are many various approaches for the oral examination that the instructor can invent himself. It is however important to give students questions at the beginning of the lesson, let them discuss the solutions and compare the individual aspects of the answers. This way, the students learn to understand and logically connect their partial knowledge into a larger understanding of the problem.
Remote testing is a possibility for students not physically available on exercises for some reason, to be tested. The question is, if we should permit students to use this possibility and if yes, then the question is – how often? Judging from our experience, this choice appears as a good way just in special unavoidable cases. We should eliminate test activation for remote student access, thereby forcing students to attend lessons, to do tests at the university and to participate on lab exercises in an active way. The reason for this is, as mentioned earlier, unfair students’ activities concerning studying

and testing. We solve student’s absence by test activation next time the student attend lesson. This concerns student attendance on lab exercises as well. If we do not set up clear rules for students or having bad lesson plan can lead to complication in lesson work flow. We have put restriction on student attendance and the total number of repetitive tests during one semester to: t + n ≤ 3 where t - is the number of missed lectures during semester, n - is the total number of repetitive tests.
In addition to self-studying, topics discussion with students appears very good approach, according to our experience. There are more additional useful methods. I will mention most important of them. Active participation during lessons gives better results, than self-studying alone. Here is our approach to teaching second and higher CNA semesters. The lesson has following structure:
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Teacher in discussion with students, writes main router commands on the blackboard, he asks students questions about command’s properties and discusses command usage.
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Students read up lab manuals (preferably this should be done in advance at home).
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Teacher gives students additional assignment related to the subject of the lab manual.
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Students solve the assignment.
One approach is to teach students according to the lab manuals, to accomplish all labs exactly in the form written in the manual. However, our experience shows different approach is more beneficial. Student is given an assignment, containing the same or similar idea as in lab manual for studied chapter, but the formulation is different. In order to complete this assignment students can use lab manual as instructions, read lab manual and learn steps of lab tasks solutions.
In addition to self-studying of lab manuals, we recommend:

To add different and more complex assignment. This makes student to think of separate steps during task solution more carefully. They remember more facts right in the lesson, they better understand discussed topics.
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To make students to configure also different wiring or schemes then those from lab manual.
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It is useful to let them make IP subnetting, IP address assigning and basic network design every time from the beginning. It, of course, takes some time, but it worth to the effort.

To let students wire a different router configuration on each exercise. This avoids the problem, when students become accustomed to one wiring device configuration or scheme.
As a side effect, when students solve exercises only in accordance to lab manuals, they are not able to apply the gained knowledge to solve sometimes relatively basic problems (basic network troubleshooting).
„Internet is not working.” “Something is wrong.” But what is wrong? Therefore, it is desirable to assign students various different tasks and little problems, to complement exercises in lab manual.
It is worth to mention the approach when the teacher selects a small group of skilled students to lead the whole exercise. This way students are more involved in exercises, they must organize and lead other students with the help of lab manual or consultation with the instructor. This activity can be graded in the
Custom Score column of the gradebook.
We recommend assigning students case studies. It is good practice in our environment to assign such tasks as a suitable complement of the education. Each student obtains his own assignment and therefore he can fully show his/her creativity, he/she learns many valuable knowledge and skills. In CCNA 1 semester it may be e.g. a projection of a logical and physical network layout for concrete rooms or buildings, recommendation of hardware arrangement, definition of all necessary devices, subnetting, IP address space assignment.
Students may as well find out where to buy proposed devices and how much this will cost.
The problem with monitoring students during electronic testing is well known and actual in various cisco academies (or in general – in e-learning). Because of student’s cheating, it has been proved that we must set up conditions very strictly during testing. Certainly, it is not to tolerable to accept additional checking of curriculum. It is impossible in many cases to see directly the screens of all students at once; therefore we have been testing a trial version of NetOp School software enabling to monitor students. Freeware alternative could be NetBus and Back Orifice applications.

Our regional cisco academy is teaching cisco courses since year 2000. During 4,5 years, we have collected many experience with teaching and we develop good practices and skills, so we can now make education more attractive and motivate students. Since the beginning in year 2000, the quality of education in our academy increased thanks to former recommendations and practices we were using.
Apparently, the e-learning alone can not always perfectly substitute the role of teacher in the education process. No matter if using e-learning, teacher is still important element in achieving good quality of knowledge and education.
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