Authors:
Peter J. Stavroulakis
1
;
Panagiotis Photopoulos
2
;
Errikos Ventouras
3
and
Dimos Triantis
2
Affiliations:
1
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of West Attica, Athens, Greece, Department of Management and International Business, School of Business and Economics, The American College of Greece, Ag. Paraskevi, Greece, Department of Maritime Studies, School of Maritime & Industrial Studies, University of Piraeus, Piraeus, Greece
;
2
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of West Attica, Athens, Greece
;
3
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of West Attica, Athens, Greece
Keyword(s):
Evaluation Methodologies, Adaptive Testing, Multiple-choice Questions, Electronic Examinations.
Abstract:
The use of computer-based examination systems offers advantages related to the reduction of human resource allocation and to gains in objectivity for the scoring process. Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are widely used in such systems; one of the main reasons that hamper their effectiveness, in comparison with constructed response questions (CRQ), is the influence of guessing. Considering limitations within previously proposed MCQs examination methods and scoring rules, in the present work a novel MCQs examination method is presented, termed ‘adaptive’ MCQs method. MCQs are divided into 3 categories, per difficulty level. The ‘path’ that an examinee will follow is constituted by 3 phases, wherein a set of questions belonging to one of the three difficulty-categories, is appointed. The exact path followed is selected per the success level of the examinee in the preceding phase. The scoring provided by the adaptive MCQs examination method produced results that were statistically indis
tinguishable to the scoring produced by a traditional CRQ examination method. At the same time, both the scoring results of the adaptive MCQs examination and the scoring results of the CRQ examination differed significantly from those obtained by a generic ‘non-adaptive’ MCQs examination.
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