WHY ARE SOME TUTORS SETTING OBJECTIVE EXAMS IN NIGERIAN SECONDARY SCHOOLS SO CARELESS?

TIPS FOR SETTING MULTIPLE CHOICE EXAMINATIONS

IN NIGERIAN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

exam hall

 1. Present a single, definite statement in a concise easy stem. Students should know what is being asked from the stem, not from the answer options. Eliminate irrelevant materials. Address only one piece of information per question.2. Ensure that only one response is considered best or correct by experts in the field. If dealing with opinion

( as opposed to fact), cite the source.

3.  Avoid negative statements. Negative words and prefixes are often misread. Never use double negatives. If negative must be used, capitalize, underline, or otherwise highlight the negative term.

4. Use only plausible and attractive alternatives as incorrect response choice. Good response choices are those that can help pinpoint student’s knowledge. It is therefore best to include choices that reflect common misconceptions or errors in logic. But please note that when choices are obviously incorrect they are, for all practical purposes, not real choices or options

5. Avoid giving clues to the correct option. Clues can take many forms: inconsistencies in grammar, sentence lengths, structure or style: use of words such as ‘always’ or ‘never’, presenting exhaustive opposites; answers to other questions on the exam, to name a few.

6. Avoid interdependent items where the answer to one item is necessary to work on the next item. This,however, should  not eliminate the possibility of having multiple questions relating to the same data or passage.

7. Use as choice ‘all of the above’ and ‘none of the above’ sparingly, if at all. Make sure that these are sometimes the correct and sometimes the incorrect choices.

8. Avoid irrelevant sources of difficulty. Esoteric terminology should be used when such terminology is an integral part of the objective.

9. Arrange response choices in logical order. For example, when dates or numbers are presented as response choices, list them in order. Or type answer alternatives in a vertical list.

10. Avoid patterns of response: the correct answer should appear in each of the response positions approximately on equal number of times but in random order.

11. Present the same number of choices throughout the test. The use of variable number of response choices can cause students to make clerical errors unrelated to their understanding of the material.

12.Do not write questions on trivial ideas.

13.It is always a good idea to pre-test your questions for content, format, and length.

 14.   A MULTIPLE CHOICE EXAM CAN TEST KNOWLEDGE AT SEVERAL LEVELS.

          a.    LOW LEVEL QUESTIONS: Recall date, report observations, identify, define.

          b.   CONVERGENT QUESTIONS: Find similarities or/and differences, identify relationships, draw inferences, explain.

           c.   DIVERGENT QUESTIONS: Develop a theory, make predictions, develop a generalization, speculate.

 15.  LENGTH: You should not give students less than one minute per question (a maximum of 50 questions for a 50 minute class period.) You may choose to give even fewer questions depending on the number of responses per questions or calculations required.

TIPS FOR PREVENTING CHEATING IN THE EXAM HALL

16.   There are two main aspects of multiple choice exams that create possible cheating opportunities,

17.   First, during the exam copying answers from others may be easier than with subjective answers.

18.   Second, after the exam, changing answers, or attempting to submit others work may be easier.

With a little forethought, these can both be dealt with very effectively

19.   The most common way to prevent cheating is to use multiple versions of the exam as done by JAMB these days It is important to mix the order of the questions and the order of the items. There are many test- bank computer programs available that will automatically do this for you. If you change the order of the questions make sure that all versions are equally logically ordered. For example, if one version was in a logical order and the others were in a random order, those students with added clues of order may do better in the exam.

20.   Make sure the versions alternate then they are handed out.

21.   Have students keep the exam papers face down until you signal the start.

22.   Where affordable some instructors choose to identify the versions on different colors of paper. This means that the he can identify if students  have shuffled the order of the exams and are sitting next to others with the same version. However, this also means that students may be able to identify a potential source for cheating.

 23.      You may also choose to use ‘phantom’ versions where you indicate that you have more versions than you actually have. For example, use four ‘Versions’ but have only 2 keys (versions 1 and 3 are actually the same.  as are versions 2 and 4).

 24.   Be sure all desks are cleared of any material and  such materials placed out before starting the exam.

 25.  Do not allow toilet-going.

EXTRACTED FROM THE WEB A FEW YEARS AGO