Automated System of Competencies Indicators’ Formation Control during the Basic Boolean Algebra Studying

Abstract

The effective study of Computer Science is impossible without the widespread use of information technology. Boolean algebra is one of the most fundamental sections of computer science. There is a list of disadvantages of this testing method for the evaluation of the master’s degree students’ knowledge of this topic. This results in development of other interactive tools. This article is devoted to the development and operation features of the automated system “Boolean algebra”, which was designed to control the formation of the competencies’ achievement indicators obtained during studying Boolean algebra. The developed system automatically creates task option and contains three types of tasks. The frst task includes construction of a truth table for three Boolean functions, the second requires Boolean circuit construction, and the third task is focused on Boolean expression simplifying. The system architecture consists of eightindependent modules which realize the new task option synthesis and its design, Boolean functions decomposition, truth tables construction, analysis, and evaluation of the results. The article describes the concept of each module. It describes in detail the synthesis of Boolean functions, as well as the analysis modules and their functioning algorithms. The automated system under operation proved to be effective since it allows one to objectively evaluate user’s theoretical knowledge and ability to apply these methods to the truth tables construction. There are also several advantages of the considered automated system: it requires little space on a hard disk, workes in a network and on local computer, has intuitive interface, generates a large variety of tasks and performs their autocheking.