Answer Scripts Research Articles

PEMBELAJARAN BERASASKAN PROJEK (PBP): ‘MY ROLLER-COASTER’ TERHADAP TAHAP KEYAKINAN MURID DALAM PEMBELAJARAN SAINS DI SEKOLAH MENENGAH KEBANGSAAN

A major challenge often faced by students is the lack of confidence level and difficulty in understanding subjects that are abstract in nature with conventional learning approaches. This study is to analyze the level of students' confidence in the subject of Science KSSM in Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan by using a project-based learning approach (PBP): ‘My Roller-Coaster’. The study sample involved 10 form 3 students in Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan. The method of this study is qualitatively based on observations and partial -structured interviews on students' responses and behaviors using answer scripts written by respondents and also recordings of researcher interviews as data and transcribed into written documents. This study shows that among the problems that are often discussed is that students who do not answer the question completely is due to boredom, laziness and lack of confidence of students to answer questions related to the sub -topic of the Principle of Conservation of Energy. Researchers found that with the PBP approach as a ‘hands-on’ in the teaching and learning process for Science subjects can increase the level of students' confidence in answering all questions on the sub-topic of the Principle of Coservation of Energy. Further research can be carried out related to the PBP approach to students' communication skills as well as teacher mastery.

Evaluation of Descriptive Exam Answer Scripts using Word Mover’s Distance

The knowledge and competency assessment have paramount significance in the education system. Recent scenario of COVID-19 witnessed the need of migrating from traditional education system to a modern online learning environment. Currently in the online assessment process, descriptive exam answer scripts evaluation is one of the tedious tasks to the teachers. The knowledge assessment may sometimes lead to biasing based on the mood of the evaluator and other circumstancing parameters. In general, though the evaluation process is well defined, still when two evaluators evaluate the same scripts, there are very less chances to award the same marks. The proposed model aims to address such real time issues and outer performs of the evaluation of descriptive answer scripts by using text semantic similarity measure. The proposed model works based on the word mover’s distance, whose purpose is to measure the semantic similarity among the actual answer and the answer given by the students. In this work, the data set is generated from the descriptive on-line examination platform. The data set contains student’s answers, which can pre-process initially and measure the semantic similarity among key answer and student’s answers. The given automatic evaluation procedure, could guarantee the impartiality and concealment of the evaluation.

Evaluating Descriptive Answer Using Machine Learning And Natural Language Processing

Assessment of the descriptive paper is a tough challenge. It requires lot of man power. In educational institutions a primary hassle is evaluation of descriptive type questions & answers. Using NLP this descriptive answer assessment proper answers and the pupil answer scripts. More marks is probably awarded, if the similarity withinside the answers is more. There are several advantages of using this automated assessment device as it permits in decreasing the time concerned about the resource of the usage of faculty to correct the descriptive papers. The examinations can be accomplished online, the answers can be evaluated right now and it would be beneficial for universities, schools and schools for academic purpose with the resource of the usage of presenting ease to colleges and the examination evaluation cell.

Effects of an In-house Entry Test on the Post-Foundation Students at an Omani College of Technology

This paper reports the findings of a study that investigated why a large number of test-takers show a low performance in four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) offered in an entry test used by a College of Technology in Oman to place students in advanced diploma and bachelor’s degree programs. The main research question was meant to find out what difficulties the test takers face in the three tests (Listening, reading, and writing) in two semesters. The study analyzed the entry test results for two semesters including survey results obtained from the test takers regarding the difficulties experienced by them in the three tests and an analysis of writing answer scripts. The findings indicate that most test takers were not qualified enough to pursue their studies in the advanced diploma or bachelor’s degree programs due to their low performance in the entry test. The findings, moreover, suggest that the current placement test poses difficulties for most test-takers. Therefore, based on the findings, the possible reasons for the low performance of the test takers and the fairness of the entry test are explicitly discussed and finally, suggestions and recommendations for addressing the issue of the current entry test are offered.

The use of excel spread sheet and printer in marking medical science objective questions

Background: Multiple-choice question (MCQ) is an effective form of written assessments for knowledge acquisition. Optical mark reading scanner is used for grading MCQs. Major setback in the use of scanner is the cost of acquiring it. Consequently, several manual methods such as conference making and stencil overlay are used to mark MCQ. This paper highlights the use of Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet and printer to mark MCQ and compares the method with other manual methods of marking. Materials and Methods: Five sets of 100 stems of objective questions (true or false, one in five, and matching types) were administered to students. Answer script was designed using Excel Spreadsheet. Three groups of marking were done: directly on the question paper, use of stencil for marking on the answer script, use of Microsoft Excel soft copy. At the end of the marking process, mean marking time, mean collation time, mean counting time, and mean marking error were collated and compared. The instant computer statistical software was used to calculate means, standard deviations, and ANOVA. A P < 0.05 was regarded as statistically significant. Results: Results showed a statistically significant low mean marking time of 0.68 h (P < 0.0001) for the spreadsheet/printer marking method. Marking error was significantly low with this method (P < 0.001) as compared with other manual marking methods. The collation time and counting time were not significantly different across the groups. Conclusion: It is concluded that Excel Spreadsheet and printer marking method significantly reduced marking time and marking errors in marking MCQs.

Difficulties in Solving Non-Routine Problems: Preliminary Analysis and Results

Students have been taught to solve problems since primary school. However, they still have been having difficulties in solving mathematics problems, especially non-routine problems. By searching errors in mathematics skills and cognitive abilities that have been causing difficulties in solving non-routine problems, this study aims to determine the dominant difficulties that high-achieving students commonly face. A problem-solving test (PST) that comprises four non-routine problems involving algebra was distributed to 56 Form Four selected students through purposive sampling. Each problem is followed by a reflection that allows students to describe the difficulties they face while solving the problem. Hence, the qualitative and quantitative analysis of answer scripts as well as students’ reflection shows that the dominant difficulties faced by high-achieving students when solving non-routine problems are language and information management skills. Poor mastery of these two skills has resulted in students being unable to decipher the problem accordingly which then leads to failing to solve the problems. The findings of this study provide important insight for educators and also researchers in assisting students to deal with their difficulties to solve non-routine problems.

Evaluating the best tool to assess the cognitive domain of first year MBBS students in the subject of Biochemistry

Introduction: Assessment is an essential part of the learning process in education. Students follow a surface approach when assessment emphasis is on recall of factual knowledge. Students adopt a deep approach if assessment demands cognitive abilities. The aim of the study was to evaluate the best tool for assessing the cognitive domain of the first year MBBS students. Materials and Methods: I MBBS students of 28 in number who had scored more than 60 percent marks in the formative assessment examinations were included. Institutional Ethics Committee approval was obtained. Ten types of assessment tools were used. Answer scripts were evaluated by two examiners. SPSS version 16.0 was used for statistical analysis. ANOVA and Tukey posthoc analysis were used. A P value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: All the students performed well in the close-ended questions with statistical significant P=0.000 Conclusion: Good performers did well in all types of questions. Average performers did well in closed ended questions. Poor performers did not perform in both. Essays and SAQs remain the choice to differentiate a best performer in good performing candidates.

Answer Script Evaluation using Machine Learning

The current way of checking answer scripts is hectic for the college. They need to manually check the answers and allocate the marks to the students. Our proposed system uses Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing techniques to beat this. Machine learning algorithms use computational methods to find out directly from data without hopping on predetermined rules. NLP algorithms identify specific entities within the text, explore for key elements during a document, run a contextual search for synonyms and detect misspelled words or similar entries, and more. Our algorithm performs similarity checking and also the number of words associated with the question exactly matched between two documents. It also checks whether the grammar is correctly used or not within the student's answer. Our proposed system performs text extraction and evaluation of marks by applying Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing techniques.

A Tracking System to Enhance Transportation of Examination Materials based on Spatial and Cloud Technologies

This article is an extract of the ongoing study which seeks to develop a framework for secure transportation, tracking and storage of examination question papers, answer scripts using spatial data, sensing, and cloud technologies. This part of the study investigated the transportation of examination materials in relation to examination malpractices and leakages. Based on the findings, the study explored the use of GPS, GPRS/GSM and cloud technologies to enhance the distribution process of examination question papers and answer scripts. We proposed a GPS tracking system which would ensure real-time tracking and monitoring of the examination distribution process. The primary benefit of this system is that the transportation vehicles will always be tracked and remain monitored such that if there is any holdup, immediate action can to be taken. Also since GPS allows constant updates in real-time, any sort of uneven event happening, the main station will be informed immediately. This helps timely action to be taken and also eliminates human interventions or rather depending on humans to report any uneven event. The baseline study indicated that the challenges faced in the distribution process were mainly lack of reliable transportation vehicles which accounted for 67% of those who did not have any designated vehicles. A remote monitoring system was proposed as a way of improving the distribution process.

Intervention Models in Arabic Vocabulary Proficiency in The J-Qaf Program Among Primary School Pupils

Purpose – Arabic acquisition is the main element that has to be mastered by pupils in order to attain proficiency in the Arabic Language. A total of 600 words should be mastered in the j-QAF program. Nevertheless, mistakes in the vocabulary enrichment aspect, as well as its Arabic spelling often occur. The j-QAF program is a new education initiative introduced by the Ministry of Education (MOE) under the Islamic Education Section (IES) that was formerly known as the Department of Islamic and Moral Education (IMED). Hence, this research is to show the extent of the proficiency level of the pupils in Arabic vocabulary enrichment acquired through the j-QAF program in aspects such as spelling, word meaning knowledge and usage in sentences. This study will also introduce the vocabulary enrichment teaching intervention model which has been proved effective in regard to the Arabic language vocabulary enrichment aspect. Methodology – An Arabic vocabulary enrichment mastering test covering the three aspects was administered to 120 standard 3 pupils in the district of Klang, Selangor. A total of 360 answer scripts were received and analysed. In addition, a set of questionnaires for pupils and Arabic teachers were also distributed to further strengthen the researched data. Findings – The study shows that the percentage of grade A, B and C passes in the Arabic-spelling aspect was 100 percent, knowledge of meaning aspect was 84 percent and the usage of words in sentences aspect was 63 percent. Other than that, the results of the Arab language teachers' questionnaire reported that the proficiency of the primary school pupils has a significant impact on the learning of the Arabic language. Significance – Innovation in teaching of Arabic and language and spread of religious studies especially Quranic studies and Hadith and also related studies.

Phonological and Morphological Basis Underlying the English Graphophonemic Knowledge of Preparatory Year Students at Saudi Universities

Graphophonemic (GP) knowledge of a language represents the foundation of a good learning start point. In the English as a foreign language (EFL) context, many learners lack adequate GP knowledge of English, resulting in difficulty to master the language skills even at the tertiary level. Thus, this study investigated first-year university, commonly known as Preparatory Year (PY), students' GP knowledge of English. To do this, the study made use of two instruments "a survey of students" answer scripts and an English GP Knowledge Survey (EGPKS). The first instrument included the survey of the Diagnostic Test answer scripts of PY students' Listening and Speaking and Writing subjects. In addition, the English GP knowledge survey was developed and administered to 252 PY students at Najran University. The results were analyzed with the crosscheck method of both instruments to validate the data and results. The results of both instruments showed that approximately 50% of the participants did not have adequate GP knowledge, which included English phonological and morphological bases. The phonological bases included graph/digraph to consonant or vowel phonemes and graph/digraph to zero phonemes, and the morphological bases included syllable division structure and adding suffixes. The study gave a close picture of the PY students' GP knowledge that would be a useful teaching resource in similar EFL contexts.

Descriptive Answer Script Grading System using CNN BiLSTM Network

Descriptive answer script assessment and rating program is an automated framework to evaluate the answer scripts correctly. There are several classification schemes in which a piece of text is evaluated on the basis of spelling, semantics and meaning. But, lots of these aren’t successful. Some of the models available to rate the response scripts include Simple Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), Deep LSTM. In addition to that Convolution Neural Network and Bi-directional LSTM is considered here to refine the result. The model uses convolutional neural networks and bidirectional LSTM networks to learn local information of words and capture long-term dependency information of contexts on the Tensorflow and Keras deep learning framework. The embedding semantic representation of texts can be used for computing semantic similarities between pieces of texts and to grade them based on the similarity score. The experiment used methods for data optimization, such as data normalization and dropout, and tested the model on an Automated Student Evaluation Short Response Scoring, a commonly used public dataset. By comparing with the existing systems, the proposed model has achieved the state-of-the-art performance and achieves better results in the accuracy of the test dataset.

Junior secondary school students' intralingual errors in essays written in French language

This study set out to identify students’ intralingual errors in the essays written in French. The study adopted the ex-post facto design, using the content analysis technique. The population comprised 2,893 copies of descriptive essays written in French Language by year 3 junior secondary school students in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in 2015, 2016 and 2017 in Imo State. The sample of 228 essays was selected through stratified, purposive and proportionate random sampling techniques. The three instruments for the study were the question papers on French Language, the students’ answer scripts and a researcher-designed Checklist of Intralingual Errors for Learning French (CIELF). The data from the error analysis were subjected to analysis using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and the research question that guided the study was answered in percentages. The results showed that the students committed eight intralingual errors, which include overgeneralization, omission, addition, simplification of parts of speech, misinformation, agreement, verb forms and mechanical errors. Part of the recommendations is for teachers of French to build language instructions on students’ prior knowledge and experiences, thereby making French languagelearning to be real and interesting to the students.

Role of written examination in the assessment of attitude ethics and communication in medical students: Perceptions of medical faculties.

BACKGROUND:The study aims to record the perceptions of medical faculties regarding the effectiveness of theory-based examination to assess the newly introduced competencies of attitude ethics and communication (AETCOM) in the competency-based medical curriculum for Indian medical graduates.MATERIALS And METHODS:This is an analytical cross-sectional study performed on the month of February 2020 where a prevalidated questionnaire consisting of components of AETCOM was e-mailed to the teaching faculties of IQ City Medical College via Google Forms. Consenting faculties responded. Their results were analyzed by inbuilt Google statistics and were cross-verified with SPSS 20.0.RESULTS:Sixty percent faculties strongly agree regarding the beneficial role of mandatory inclusion of AETCOM competencies in competency-based medical education. About 61.66% of faculties strongly agree that both formative assessment and summative assessment of AETCOM are essential. Although 48.33% of faculties believed that theoretical questions can be used to assess AETCOM, 51.66% of faculties do not agree that theory examination serves as an effective tool to assess AETCOM. They believe that AETCOM cannot be written on paper and attitude can change in reality when facing a real-world clinical scenario in contrast to what is written in answer script during creative writing.CONCLUSIONS:Assessment of AETCOM is essential and it should be preferably done via a practical approach in a real-world simulated scenario and not by written theoretical examination.

A New Method for Assessment of Engineering Drawing Answer Scripts Using Fuzzy Logic

Popular method for assessment of final exam answer scripts in university and among the engineering drawing answer scripts based on absolute true or false judgment and assigning a single number or letter to answer of each problem cannot be so fair. To obtain a fair assessment method, we considered “imagination”, “accuracy”, “drawing” and “innovation” that are objectives of engineering drawing course to be separately assessed for each problem. Flexibility and linguistic properties of fuzzy logic made us use it as the basis of our method. In addition, fuzzy variables and membership functions are easily linguistic explainable, and adjustable to different conditions. “Answering time” was added as a factor with only a positive effect on the final grade. Between these five factors, imagination has special importance because it supports one of seven human intelligences which is spatial ability Finally, however we applied the proposed method to engineering drawing course, it can be applied to other courses with considering their properties.

WRITING SKILLS OF THE PROFESSIONAL STUDENTS –AN ANALYTICAL STUDY

Objectives: To analyse the writing skills of professional students at the undergraduate level and also to suggest some of the ways to rectify their mistakes and refine their writing. Methods/statistical analysis: To test the professional students’ writing skills, 10 students were selected and were allowed to answer the questionnaire given to them. The answer scripts were evaluated by English faculty members mainly to project the mistakes of the students in their writing. Findings: High achievers in English (HAs) and low achievers in English (LAs) were identified through the evaluation. It was also found that professional students made more mistakes in grammar part, specifically, tense forms, prepositions, articles, etc. Application/improvements: Ways to improve their writing skills are suggested. Keywords: Writing Skills, English Language, Low Achievers, High Achievers

Language Mastery of Refugee Children in Malaysia Despite Adverse Circumstances

Refugee education is a challenge to the Malaysian government, with the ever rising influx of refugees into the country. Malaysia has policies in place whereby refugee children are not entitled or allowed an education in the government school system. They are encouraged to secure private education. The researcher was appointed as the external examiner for Year Six, the final year of Primary Education, whereby it was noted that a number of students had mastery of languages despite their adverse circumstances as refugee children. Eleven students from the refugee camp were randomly selected on the basis of anonymity. They were interviewed within a secure environment and this data was analysed along with the test answer scripts. The study seeks to explore plausible reasons for their language mastery despite adverse circumstances and offers insights for the findings to be applied within a local context where English is taught as a second language. Key words: refugee, education, mastery, languages

Using Students’ Answer Scripts in Developing Writing Skills at Tertiary Level:

It is not unusual for the English Language teachers, especially in Bangladesh to come across students of different levels (advanced, intermediate, and beginner) in a class that makes it harder to plan any unique method to be applied for all of them at a time, especially in the case of teaching writing. A unique method in teaching writing is also unsuitable because there is a risk of having some demotivated students. Consequently, the task becomes challenging for the teacher as the outcome of students’ achievement is inadequate. While expertise in English calls for developing four skills – reading, writing, listening, and speaking – in Bangladesh, there is hardly any noticeable or effective method being used developing those skills. Most importantly, little attention is paid to the implementation of effective teaching strategies to develop writing skills. This paper attempts to discuss and explore the potential of reusing students’ written scripts in teaching writing. Students will engage with samples of earlier writing to identify and correct the grammatical and spelling mistakes, rearrange the ideas, and then reproduce it, thereby improving their writing skills. Students’ written scripts, which are often disposed of after being checked, can be reproduced for the students to teach writing by allowing them to encounter different varieties of English language styles and common errors.

Developing a Framework for Online Practice Examination and Automated Score Generation

Examination is the process by which the ability and the quality of the examinees can be measured. It is necessary to ensure the quality of the examinees. Online examination system is the process by which the participants can appear at the examination irrespective of their locations by connecting to examination site via Internet using desktop computers, laptops or smart phones. Automated score generation is the process by which the answer scripts of the examinations are evaluated automatically to generate scores. Although, there are many existing online examination systems, the main drawback of these systems is that they cannot compute automated score accurately, especially from the text-based answers. Moreover, most of them are unilingual in nature. As a result, examinees can appear at the examination in a particular language.Considering this fact, in this paper, we present a framework that can take Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) examinations and written examinations in two different languages English and Bangla. We develop a database where the questions and answers are stored. The questions from the database are displayed in the web page with answering options for the MCQ questions and text boxes for the written questions. For generating the scores of the written questions, we performed several types of analysis of the answers of the written questions. However, for generating the scores of the MCQ questions, we simply compared between the database answers and the user’s answers. We conducted several experiments to check the accuracy of score generation by our system and found that our system can generate 100% accurate scores for MCQ questions and more than 90% accurate scores from text based questions.

Hypothesis Testing on Regression: Investigating Students’ Skill

This study aims to investigate students’ ability to write a correct hypothesis based on the statement referring to regression coefficients. Different statements of regression coefficients, specifically the slope were given in the standard format of test questions and the students were asked to conduct an appropriate hypothesis test. From the decision made, the students also had to provide suitable conclusions on each of the tests conducted. 197 answer scripts were inspected and the focus was given to the hypothesis statement and the conclusion provided by the students. The results indicated that students were able to write proper hypothesis statement for a regression coefficient that directly refers to the slope of the variable. However, they failed to provide correct hypothesis when they had to translate the definition of slope to an appropriate hypothesis statement. Despite their ability to write simple hypothesis for regression slope, they still had difficulties in providing conclusions for the tests conducted. The study also clearly revealed that even though some of the students managed to write proper conclusions, they did not correspond to the hypothesis statements given earlier, as the conclusions made were merely based on the question statement.