Innovative and comprehensive online testing in quantitative courses

Abstract

Quantitative courses, such as operations management, business statistics, management science, marketing research, etc., are perceived as being among the most challenging by business students. Most of the traditional in-class exams used in these courses are inadequate as they tend to focus only on a specific part of a given decision-making process/model/methodology. Relevant literature suggests that testing students on course material has a direct impact on students’ understanding and retention of the material. Given the inadequacy of traditional in-class exams, quantitative business courses miss this valuable opportunity to aid student understanding and retention of the decision-making processes of these courses. Therefore, the main ambition of this manuscript is to present an innovative approach to comprehensively test students on the course material within an online environment. Apart from highlighting its added ability over in-class exams, we also present some evidence to suggest that this approach may indeed facilitate students to gain a comprehensive understanding of these decision-making methodologies and retain this knowledge over an extended period of time.