Design, Development, and Initial Evaluation of a Web-Based Music Ear-Training Assessment System in Higher Education

Online assessment of music ear training requires the coordinated delivery of auditory stimuli, musical response formats, and examination records. In this study, a web-based assessment system for higher education was designed, developed, and initially evaluated. A React interface and Firebase services integrated reusable items, audio playback, a virtual pitch-reference piano, local and cloud response saving, and instructor-controlled grading. The initial evaluation combined a three-expert content review of 50 rhythmic-dictation and chord-quality items with a 12-item questionnaire completed by 101 consenting respondents. Mean item–objective congruence was 0.953. The broad user-evaluation composite averaged 4.30 out of 5 (SD = 0.60; 95% CI = 4.18–4.41; Cronbach’s α = 0.943). Exploratory factor analysis supported one dominant questionnaire factor (KMO = 0.907; Bartlett’s χ2(66) = 1063.49, p < 0.001; 62.65% variance explained) rather than four distinct latent dimensions. Post-review controlled technical testing across 145 trials showed 25/25 successful audio-playback requests, 25/25 same-device recoveries, 20/20 acknowledged Firestore writes, and 20/20 successful final submissions with no duplicate records or scoring discrepancies. These findings provide preliminary content-alignment, user-perception, questionnaire-structure, and selected technical-performance evidence. Examination-score reliability, item discrimination, performance on physical mobile hardware, and learning effects remain to be evaluated.