Exam Marks Research Articles

Formative Feedback on Problem-Solving Skills: Intent and Action

Formative feedback is integral for the learning of difficult skills such as problem solving. To understand why less than ideal amounts of feedback are sometimes provided to students, this study elicited undergraduate engineering instructors’ intentions, and then observed their actions regarding formative feedback on midterm exams in courses that purport to teach problem solving. Intentions were collected through a survey that emulated the intentions-focused portion of the Teaching Perspectives Inventory. The questions were reworked to reference Fink’s FIDeLity feedback system. Actions were then measured by analyzing feedback provided on previous midterm exams administered by the same instructors who filled out the survey. Alignment between the instructors’ intentions and actions were analyzed by comparing the survey results and the midterm exam marking. Overall, instructors’ actions are generally aligned with their intentions. However, their intentions tend to favour time saving practices rather than using every known method for providing high-quality formative feedback.

Movies, ethics and accounting: a teaching experience

This research presents an innovative learning experience undertaken in three groups of a financial accounting course at the University of Valencia (Spain). After watching three accounting-related movies, students answered a test based on each movie with questions about the ethical and accounting issues described in them and their satisfaction with the learning technique. Nonparametric tests and a multivariate analysis showed that the students who participated in this experience obtained a higher exam mark than those who did not. Our results evidence a significant effect on the final exam mark for more questions only in one of the movies. Our results are valuable because they show that students engage in this methodological approach, which can be helpful for them to improve their exam performance.

Correlation between Admission Criteria and Academic Performance in Medical and Dental Colleges of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Aim: To evaluate the connection among admission criteria and academic performance amongst medical and dental scholars of different institutes of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Study design: Quantitative-cross-sectional study. Study setting: Department of Medical Education of Khyber Medical University, Peshawar from 15th February to 15th July 2017. Methodology: Ten thousand and sixty one students attending 10 Medical colleges of KP from entering for qualification who were registered in the 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 academic sessions. Results: Intermediate marks (with median =0.22) have noteworthy correlation (both at 0.05 & 0.01 points) with all 5 professional exam marks of all medical sample scholars, trailed by Merit and Entrance test (0.33 and 0.19 median marks). The relationship for merit and entrance marks was also noteworthy for all of the cases excluding for 3rd year. Conclusion: All the forecasters (intermediate, entrance test and merit marks) were meaningfully linked with all 5 MBBS examination marks of all the medical colleges, in nearly all the six units. Though, stepwise regression analysis uncovered that amongst the analysts, from 1st to 4th year, Intermediate was establish the finest analyst, tracked by merit and entrance score whereas for the fifth year; merit was the finest analyst, trailed by entrance test and Intermediate scores. Key words: Educational Testing and Evaluation Agency (ETEA), Predictive validity,

An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Continuous Assessment on the Final Exam Mark

Since the Bologna Process was adopted, continuous assessment has been a cornerstone in the curriculum of most of the courses in the different degrees offered by the Spanish Universities. Continuous assessment plays an important role in both students’ and lecturers’ academic lives. In this study, we analyze the effect of the continuous assessment on the performance of the students in their final exams in courses of Statistics at the University of Almería. Specifically, we study if the performance of a student in the continuous assessment determines the score obtained in the final exam of the course in such a way that this score can be predicted in advance using the continuous assessment performance as an explanatory variable. After using and comparing some powerful statistical procedures, such as linear, quantile and logistic regression, artificial neural networks and Bayesian networks, we conclude that, while the fact that a student passes or fails the final exam can be properly predicted, a more detailed forecast about the grade obtained is not possible.

Statistical Analysis on Students’ Evaluation and Students’ Final Exam Marks in Undergraduate Mathematical Courses at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a global health issue and has had a major impact on education. Distance learning was implemented during COVID-19 pandemic. Concerns towards the negative impact of online learning such as lack of physical interaction between lecturers and students give rise on the need to study the impact of such a method towards student’s performance and student’s perception in the quality of teaching. This paper aims to determine whether the subject’s mean marks and lecturer’s evaluation (e-PPP) marks differs significantly between the online and face to face teaching method. From the case study of subjects offered by Mathematical Sciences Department in UTM, the results show that there is no correlation between the subject’s mean marks and lecturer’s evaluation marks. Findings from ANOVA show that both marks are not significantly different between the online and face to face of teaching methods. This may indicate the adaptability and readiness from students to experience and embrace the distance learning via online teaching.

Statistical Modeling and Analysis of Online Examinations in Covid-19

In this paper, the authors build a model that predicts the grade point from a collection of independent variables including student characteristics and exam marks achieved in four marketing management courses using data from four courses. The data from four courses in marketing management, for an off-line class in a master’s in business management program taught in 2019 and the same set of four courses in marketing management taught to an on-line class in 2020 was taken. Although the number of students enrolled was almost equal, and the courses, despite being offered a year apart, were nearly comparable in structure and content, the teaching and assessment for 2019 was conducted offline, whereas it was conducted online in 2020. In the set of four courses offered in 2019 using the offline mode, the exam was proctored and offline but for the same courses offered in 2020, the final exam was also proctored but online. The authors predicted that if exams were taken without any misconduct, the prediction model would have the same explanatory power for all exams, and that if there was malpractice, the explanatory power would be lower. Their findings show that the two datasets are similar; there are variations in the independent variables that statistically and significantly predicted the Grade Point Average (GPA). The R-squared statistic suggests that the model for prediction is strong. Hence there is reason to believe that malpractice was taking place when the examinations were online, in spite of it being proctored. The goal of this paper is to provide teachers with practical ideas for administering proctored tests in their online courses.

Exam Marks Summation App Using Tesseract OCR in Python

There are no tools to auto grade subjective questions and no auto summations app to date. As a result, examiners need to mark subjective answer scripts manually and they might overlook some marks while summing up subjective answer scripts scores obtained by students. Therefore, this study aims to develop an exam mark summation app to ease miscalculation problems. Tesseract OCR was implemented in this Marks Summation App as a platform to scan the multi-page handwritten marks using pen tip above a 0.5mm size in red, blue, and black to recognise the marks wrote by the examiners. The captured marks images will be uploaded to server for image processing by promptly executing the python script in the server. The extraction of numbers from the processed image will sum up the scores to determine each candidate's final score. It is recommendable to scan the original materials to produce more accurate accuracy. Out of 118 numbers from 21 testing samples, 88 numbers are correctly recognised, whereas 30 are not recognised correctly. Thus, the accuracy of the developed exam mark summation app is 74.58%. The app's performance is more superior than car plate recognition result in the field. In the future, we hope to increase the app’s recognition accuracy by exploring deep learning in recognizing handwritten numbers.

Student engagement and performance: evidence from the first wave of COVID-19 in Italy

ABSTRACT This study investigates the effects of student engagement and rapidity of completing exams on student performance before and during the first wave of COVID-19 in March 2020, examining the effect of the shift from face-to-face to online teaching and exams in a Master’s in Business Administration degree at a university in Italy. Prior literature mainly finds that student marks benefit from student engagement, but it has been unclear how COVID-19 affected this link. We find that COVID-19 reduced this benefit in the short term. Prior literature also finds that student performance benefits from passing the exam at the earliest opportunity but the effect of COVID-19-related changes on this remains unclear. We find that the link between higher exam marks and rapidity of completing exams was strengthened by COVID-19. The research contributes to the debate on costs and benefits of COVID-19 on accounting education quality. It confirms that there are disadvantages, in terms of the lower efficacy of student engagement, and advantages, in terms of higher marks from more rapid academic progress.

Effect of an online module designed to promote first-year dental students' evidence-based study strategies.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of an online module in promoting study strategies based on neuroscience applied to education for first-year dental students at the University of the Andes in Santiago, Chile. Four weeks after the start of the 2018 first academic semester, all 82 first-year dental students (72% females, 28% males, average 19.0 years old) were invited to voluntarily and anonymously complete the self-reported Study Strategies Questionnaire (SSQ) in a session of an Introduction to Dentistry course, which served as a baseline. Subsequently, the session included an interactive workshop on learning how to learn so that students could analyse how the human brain learns and relate this information to mental tools to foster learning. Furthermore, during the semester, students were sent information via email to reinforce the content they were exposed to during the learning how to learn activity so that they could use the toolbox of study techniques to improve their learning in all subjects. At the end of the semester, students were invited to voluntarily and anonymously complete a second SSQ to assess the effects of the study intervention. Exam marks from the previous (2017) and studied year (2018), as well as both SSQ results, were compared and analysed using IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A total of 75 and 71 students answered the SSQ before and after the intervention, respectively. The mean exam mark from 2017 was 63.7% (SD=8.8), whilst in 2018, it was 69.6% (SD=5.0) (p< .044); the effect size of the intervention was 0.75. The most significant changes observed after the intervention were reductions in the number of students who studied whilst checking messages on their smartphones (p= .001), studied by highlighting and/or underlining in their notes or textbooks (p ≤.0001) and studied the day before an examination (p≥ .0001). On the contrary, there were significant increases in the number of students who studied without access to social networks (p= .046), wrote notes or words in the margins of texts (p= .001), practised self-testing (p =.001) and studied the day before an examination (p≤ .0001). An online module to promote evidence-based study strategies in first-year dental students can have an impact on increasing students' marks as well as on some practices that can improve their academic achievements and learning.

Face-to-face vs distance learning in human anatomy education: a longitudinal study of students’ perspective and learning outcomes during COVID-19 pandemic

On March 9, 2020 attendance classes in Italian universities were suspended due to Covid-19 Pandemic. Thanks to the fast actions put in place by Sapienza University Governance and to the efforts made by all components of the university, the face-to-face courses were turned into on-line courses in only one week. This sudden change has been an even more exciting challenge for the Faculties of Medicine, whose members were also involved in the frontline battle against the virus. Anatomy academics, recognizing the challenges as opportunities to innovate anatomy teaching, set up at the same time: a specific survey to investigate students’ perspective on educational preferences and their mood; a longitudinal quantitative study to compare, for the first time in the same student’s population, exam grades after face-to-face classes and after online classes. The students, although with different motivations, considered valid both modes of attendance. Exam grades statistical analysis showed that anatomy exam marks after the online course had a higher average value (statistically significant) and with an excellent correlation factor, compared to the marks obtained at the end of the face-to-face course. Considering our data as a whole, we can suggest that face-to-face classes and online classes, rather than being interchangeable education modes, should be considered as modes with different characteristics that offer different educational benefits. These advantages may have different relevance for individual students, depending on their specific needs and individual preferences. This suggests the opportunity to propose customizable courses, centered on the student’s needs.

Disinterest in academics of medical students after COVID-19

Background- National Medical Commission has made the mandate of 75% class attendance as eligibility criteria to appear in professional university examinations. Which has given the importance to class attendance, through which the student can improve his academic performance and score good marks in exams also. It is notice that students shown the disinterest in class lectures rejoining the college after COVID-19. Aims And Objectives-The purpose of the present study was to analyze the causes of disinterest in lectures which is resulting to low attendance and substandard performance. Material And Methods- This descriptive, cross‑sectional study of student’s absenteeism was conducted on 580 students from phase 1 to phase III MBBS students of SARASWATI MEDICAL COLLEGE UNNAO, India. During the year 2021. After the consent from institutional Medical Education Unit. The response was collected through a structured, pretested questionnaire. Result was concluded on Likert scale and SPSS 22 software. result- The results showed that major reasons for student disinterest were long class room study hours (mean 3.95), target based post graduate studies (mean 3.78), teaching ability of faculty (mean 3.72), social media (3.58), you-tube and online studies (mean 3.39), ill‑health (mean 2.57), over confidence (mean 2.81), other factors (mean 2.23).

Evaluating performance of students in engineering statistics final exam questions

Engineering Statistics is one of Engineering Mathematics subject which is common for all the engineering courses besides Vector Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations and Numerical Analysis. Students performance in Engineering Statistics subject can be evaluated examining through the final exam questions. Students need to understand the concept learn through a semester or 14 weeks of period and do necessary preparation to do the final exam questions. Rasch model is used to evaluate students performance in Engineering Statistics examination. A total of 114 engineering students sat for Engineering Statistics final examination. There are 5 Course Outcomes and 2 Programme Outcomes for Engineering Statistics subject. The final exam marks were entered in excel. Then the marks transferred to *prn format. Next Rasch model generate the output. The outputs are summary statistics for person, summary statistics for item, item map and person map. The summary statistics for person able to groups the students into 2 groups, namely high performers and low performers. On the other hand, the items can be group into 4 groups. They are difficult, mediocre, easy and very easy. The item map and the person map able to show those groups clearly

The effect of online and in-person team-based learning (TBL) on undergraduate endocrinology teaching during COVID-19 pandemic

BackgroundTeam-based learning (TBL) combines active and collaborative learning, while incorporating aspects of the flipped classroom approach and problem-based learning. The COVID-19 pandemic presented certain challenges in the delivery of TBL in class. In this study, we investigated the impact of TBL on the academic performance of final year Biomedical Sciences’ undergraduate students in the context of an “Endocrine Disorders” study block. We did so by comparing the classical in-person approach and online delivery due to the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA non-compulsory TBL session was introduced to the curriculum of this block, which followed the traditional 2-h lecture delivery. Comparative analysis was performed for the exam and coursework performance of students who attended the TBL sessions (online and in-person) and those that did not.ResultsBoth cohorts of students who attended either in-person (n = 66) or online TBL sessions (n = 109) performed significantly better in their exams (p < 0.05) and a related coursework (p < 0.001 and p < 0.05, respectively) when compared to those that did not attend. For both these cohorts the exam mark distribution was much narrower compared to those that did not attend the TBL sessions where the majority of fails and “no shows” were recorded.ConclusionsOnline and in-person TBL, can successfully supplement traditional lecture-based teaching and enhance the learning/performance, for complex medical subjects/topics. Our findings demonstrate that it is possible to deliver these sessions online with demonstrable benefit for students suggesting that there is greater flexibility in the use of TBL in higher education.

College Management System using Salesforce

College Management system is Salesforce CRM based application which is the new technical way to manage all department related jobs. Collage management system is helpful for students as well as the colleges. In the existing system all the activities are done manually. It is very costly and time consuming. In our proposed system, students can view results using phones. The data will be stored in the Salesforce. The Admin, Faculty or the student should be a register user. The faculty can login into their college account through the application itself and update the academic result like internal exam marks obtained by the students. In this system students have easy access for viewing the marks; the application will check user authentications. Students are not permitted to manipulate any data. The proposed work has two modules: A. Student B. Teacher C. Admin. In the student’s module, students need to register their university registration number, college registration number, student name. Admin module maintains the student’s marks of internal college exams. Other than this the advanced features are: In case of natural calamities such as floods, etc. notification to students will be sent from admin office through application directly. Any new notice for a particular semester will be uploaded by professor through application notifying to respective semester students. The students can download different subject notes according to their departments. The faculty of particular department is responsible for updating the assignments, updating the attendance of every student, updating the notification related to department.

Absenteeism among undergraduate medical students and its impact on academic performance: A record-based study.

Student absenteeism is a major concern for undergraduate medical education training in India. Regular class attendance helps students have a proper understanding of the topic of discussion. This study explores the pattern of absenteeism among medical students and whether absenteeism is associated with their academic performances. A record-based, cross-sectional study was done by reviewing departmental attendance registers, item cards and marks obtained in exam by 190 students in the community medicine department who had passed their 3rd professional part 1 examination in 2018. The data was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 16. A descriptive analysis summarizes the pattern of absenteeism and their marks obtained in the semester and professional exam of community medicine. The primary outcome indicator was the 3rd professional exam marks. The correlation between class absenteeism and other predictors and exam result was analyzed. Regression analysis was done to predict dependence of outcome variable on class attendance and formative examination marks. Overall, female students had better class attendance than male students. There was a positive correlation of lecture class attendance (r = 0.369) and marks obtained in the 6th semester exam (r = 0.717) with the final exam result. Further regression analysis showed final marks had a higher dependence on the 6th semester examination score (B = 0.669) when compared to lecture class attendance (B = 0.051). Although lecture class attendance is an important predictor of final result, this study showed that the 6th semester marks were a better predictor. This may be due to multiple factors (alternate source of learning, student's motivation, etc.) which require further exploration.

Student's Performance through Online and Offline in core Information Technology courses: A Comparison

Online based education was enforced during the COVID-19 pandemic to minimize interruption in the pedagogy of teaching. Impact of transition from face-to-face to online based education on students’ learning needs to be studied. This research aims to compare the continuous assessment performance of students in both gmeet-based online and traditional offline classroom methods. Data required for this study was obtained from an academic institution (TCE-Madurai). Three core courses namely Database Management System (IV semester), Web Programming (V semester), and Theory of Computation (III semester) in the Department of Information Technology for both online (2018-2022 batch and 2019-2023 batch) and offline (2017-2021 batch) approach has been compared while considering the same cohort. Each course is designed with Course Outcomes (COs). We did Extrapolative analysis, Descriptive analysis, Correlation analysis, Regression analysis, ANOVA, and MANOVA analysis to find the relationship between internal assessments and terminal examination. The dataset has been collected from 337 students’ from the 2018-22 batch and 134 students from 2017-21 batch in the B.Tech program. Internal assessment includes three continuous assessment tests (CATs) and three assignments marks mapped with respect to corresponding COs. Terminal exam marks were also considered in the study. The dataset contains various features like scores of individual students in both internal assessments and terminal exams. Regression analysis helped to derive the relationship between final exam score which includes a specific course, a specific student, and a specific mode of delivery - Online / Offline. It explained the relationship between final exam score and internal assessment marks. It is observed that the students in online mode had significantly higher scores for the majority of the CourseOutcomes, mainly at the Knowledge level. It is difficult to measure certain areas like students’ skills and attitude level such as students’ peer Engagement, Human Interaction, Communication/Preparation, Critical thinking, and Team skills in online mode. Keywords—Regression analysis, ANOVA, MANOVA, Online Vs Offline, Core courses, Performance, Internal test, Terminal exam,

A training plan to implement lung ultrasound for diagnosing pneumonia in children

BackgroundLung ultrasound (LUS) for critical patients requires trained operators to perform them, though little information exists on the level of training required for independent practice. The aims were to implement a training plan for diagnosing pneumonia using LUS and to analyze the inter-observer agreement between senior radiologists (SRs) and pediatric intensive care physicians (PICPs).MethodsProspective longitudinal and interventional study conducted in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of a tertiary hospital. Following a theoretical and practical training plan regarding diagnosing pneumonia using LUS, the concordance between SRs and the PICPs on their LUS reports was analyzed.ResultsNine PICPs were trained and tested on both theoretical and practical LUS knowledge. The mean exam mark was 13.5/15. To evaluate inter-observer agreement, a total of 483 LUS were performed. For interstitial syndrome, the global Kappa coefficient (K) was 0.51 (95% CI 0.43–0.58). Regarding the presence of consolidation, K was 0.67 (95% CI 0.53–0.78), and for the consolidation pattern, K was 0.82 (95% CI 0.79–0.85), showing almost perfect agreement.ConclusionsOur training plan allowed PICPs to independently perform LUS and might improve pneumonia diagnosis. We found a high inter-observer agreement between PICPs and SRs in detecting the presence and type of consolidation on LUS.ImpactLung ultrasound (LUS) has been proposed as an alternative to diagnose pneumonia in children. However, the adoption of LUS in clinical practice has been slow, and it is not yet included in general clinical guidelines.The results of this study show that the implementation of a LUS training program may improve pneumonia diagnosis in critically ill patients. The training program’s design, implementation, and evaluation are described. The high inter-observer agreement between LUS reports from the physicians trained and expert radiologists encourage the use of LUS not only for pneumonia diagnosis, but also for discerning bacterial and viral patterns.

Remote Learning in Transnational Education: Relationship between Virtual Learning Engagement and Student Academic Performance in BSc Pharmaceutical Biotechnology.

The 21st century has seen dramatic changes to education delivery which have widened the scope of transnational education and remote learning via various virtual learning environments (VLEs). Efficient remote teaching activities require students to be engaged with taught materials and academic staff, and for educators to be able to track and improve student engagement. This article describes the generation of a predictive mathematical model for students’ exam performance using VLE engagement indicators and coursework marks together to enable the creation of a model with a correlation coefficient of 0.724. This article examines the relationship of each of these variables with final exam marks, as well as the addition of personal related variable X on the generated model’s accuracy. The generated models show that each variable had a different impact on the prediction of the final exam mark. The results’ analysis suggests that coursework marks and total VLE page views were the major attributes, while personal factors were also found to greatly impact model accuracy. Considering the case of outliers, who were students with low VLE engagement achieving high exam marks, it is proposed that personal factors, such as behavioural factors and study style, also have a significant effect on student academic attainment. The generated model can be used by students to improve self-efficacy by adjusting their study style and by educators to provide early interventions to support disengaged students. This model can be replicated in different remote learning settings and transnational education, and the findings might be insightful for courses with remote learning strategies to investigate the key educational, personal and engagement parameters for students’ overall success.

The impact of COVID-19 on School of Medicine students’ performance: an interrupted time series study

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly challenged the whole educational system. Shifting towards emergency remote teaching (ERT) has raised questions about its quality and effectiveness, especially for those university students enrolled on courses including interactive learning and clerkship modules as well. Therefore, we employed an interrupted time series analysis, to assess the impact of lockdown (March 2020) and subsequent shifting to ERT on exam enrollments and performance for students at the School of Medicine of the University “Federico II” of Naples, one of the largest universities nationwide, between January 2017 and February 2021.MethodsWe extracted data from 49 course modules within 14 courses of study offered by the School. Multilevel linear models were employed to account for the hierarchical structure of the data (multiple exam sessions within each module). Model covariates were time, term, course of study, and gender.ResultsIn the summer term 2020 there was a 23% increase in students enrolled on exams, as compared with the previous year (2019: 16,237; 2020: 20,091), with a 0.92% (SD 0.04) pass rate and an average mark of 26.39 (SD 2.64), as compared with the 0.89% (SD 0.78) pass rate and an average mark of 26.50 (SD 2.55) for the previous year. Considering the whole study period, we found that for the winter term following the national lockdown (March 2020) there was a 0.38 increase in the pass rate (coeff. 0.38; 95%CI 0.04,0.71), as compared with the period before the lockdown, which however was not sustained over time (slope change: -0.04; 95%CI -0.09, 0.00). No differences were found when considering changes in the average exam mark (step change: -1.38; 95%CI -2.83,0.07, slope change: 0.03; 95%CI -0.01,0.06).ConclusionsAlthough students promoted the online examination method as part of the ERT considering the increase in enrollment and the initial increase in pass rate, this change was not sustained by an improvement in their performance.Key messages The shifting toward emergency remote teaching as educational system response to COVID-19 in Italy has increased exam enrollment but not students’ performance at School of Medicine.Ensuring high quality of teaching during emergencies is fundamental. Mixed-methods follow-up studies should be conducted to evaluate students’ perception and identify ways for quality improvement.

Web-based and paper-based examinations: Lessons learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown

ObjectivesThis study describes the process of remote assessment in medical education during the COVID-19 lockdown and shares data-driven experiences in resolving emerging concerns. MethodsWe analysed the data of end-of-course paper-based exams (PBEs) and web-based exams (WBEs) conducted during the academic year 2019/2020. Twelve end-of-block exams were included. There were four exams each for the first-, second-, and third-year students. Eight exams were conducted as PBEs, and four were administered as WBEs. We compared the mean scores of PBEs and WBEs between exams and batches. Additionally, we compared the PBE and WBE scores obtained by 10 high-performance and 10 lowest-achieving students. ResultsVariations were found in the scores of students from each of the three batches in PBEs or WBEs. In a few instances, the difference was statistically significant. No specific trend or pattern was detected in the difference between the scores of PBEs and WBEs. The mean score for the WBEs was intermediate among the means of PBEs for the first- and second-year students, but lower for the third-year students. Individual students’ marks in different exams consistently showed a positive correlation. The correlation was always high for PBEs (r = 0.782, 0.847). ConclusionThe present study showed that average and individual scores in WBEs and PBEs are comparable. Although there were some variations between the results of the two assessment modalities, no remarkable trend or pattern was observed. WBEs offer an ideal approach for formative assessment, progress testing, and the low-weight, but frequent, nature of continuous assessment.