Most students are afraid of examinations, including myself. What makes things worst is to have a certification examination hours before my flight, when the only main worry on my mind is:

I have not finish packing my tour stuff!

The course starts early in the morning at 9am and … ouch, the exam was held at the end of the same day. The tricky questions were not helping me to score much. And I felt that I might do badly for the paper. I just cannot imagine that I could fail a paper which consists of 20 multiple-choice (MCQ) questions. The passing grade is 65%.

Seriously speaking, if one failed a paper, does it mean that he/she is not competent or well-versed in that subject matter?

In my past, the most common kind of examination format is a combination of MCQ, Multiple-response, Structured questions and Essays. Is this the perfect combination?

Let’s do some analysis.

Usage of MCQ or Multiple-response questions alone

I personally do not like to set such format for examination papers. For “soft” modules like Management, or Business Communications, the paper crafter could utilize the power of English to create numerous confusing answers to a simple question. Most students will be tricked by this kind of questions even though he/she understands the concept well; perhaps not in terms of formal terminologies.

Another setback of using this method alone is, students can “guess” their answers if they are unsure. For a question with 4 choices of answers, the probability of a student getting it right is 25%. Once again, understanding could not be accurately tested.

However, this type of questions allows markers to grade faster within a short time. Students could get instant results upon completion of the paper. That’s the advantage of this kind of exam format.

Usage of Structured / Essay questions

Well, yes, I somewhat agree that these kind of questions might be more useful to determine student’s level of understanding. Students are given the opportunity to write down their answers as well as their reasoning. They could also demonstrate their analytical skills in their answers.

The only drawback of this method is; the grading process could be horrendous. Teachers will see hundreds of different variations of answers and it’s really hard to derive the perfect set of grading criteria.  Teachers have a higher tendency to give “pitiful” marks especially if the student gets totally out of point but spent effort to write a full page of essay. *perspire*

It will take weeks for students to receive feedback on how well they had done for their paper.

Ah… so now that explains why most examination papers have the above combinations.

Do you agree with me?

I will talk about more examinations format when I am back. Watch this space soon!

Stumble it!