Examination Types: Suggestions and Strategies

A lot of effort goes into taking examinations, especially when the school ERP has to organize online tests. The types and number of questions are limited while taking tests through online portals.

Although some digital tools such as attendance management software, assignment management software, and examination software are used in institutions more than physical staff, testing students through the same medium is a whole different story. Over the years, professional educators help used their experiences with students and knowledge about the digital world to bring forward the most reliable examination types.

• Popular examination categories
• Multiple choice questions
• Objective type questions
• Short answer
• Essay type questions
• Problem-solving tests

Advantages of digital examination

What is the purpose of exploring digital platforms that allow convenient examination formats?

Education elevation. The quality of education has to keep on including every year, while adaptive to the dynamic changes in the system. A school ERP appoints professional experts in the form of hiring recruitment teams, technical teams, and analysts. Present-day systems lean more towards digital platforms, even for conducting examinations. Here is why;

• Students are accustomed to online teaching more after receiving more than two years of online education.
• Ecological and economic since it saves paper and expenditure on examination papers.
• Automatic grading and checking through tallying with examination tools saves time and effort for teachers.
• Less administrative complexities.
• Automatic generation of student reports.
• On-screen invigilators, motion detectors, tab switches, and other coordinators do the job of an examiner.
• Flexibility in taking an examination from anywhere students want.
• Accessible by all students.

Multiple choice questions

These consist of multiple stem questions with given possible choices of answers. Students have to choose the correct answer by clicking on it. They can edit the entire paper before final submission.

Example

Question; India is the _ largest country in the world.

Choices: a) 2nd b) 15th c) 5th d) 7th

Answering strategies

Avoid answering complex questions after going through the paper at once. Students should focus on those stem questions that they can surely choose the options for and mentally note the doubtful questions. Once the people are complete, go through doubtful choices and select the most probable one. Since multiple choice question papers have a short answering period and the allotted time for answering each question is less, the students should focus more on their efficiency of answering rather than trying to answer every question.

Objective type questions

True false, fill in the blanks, match the words and give one-word answers are the common types of objective-type questions. Every question is compulsory.

Answering strategies

This is for writing down the answers, going through the paper, and choosing the simplest portion. Every objective type of question paper can be divided into two or three more subcategories. Answering the easiest portions first gives students more time to focus on difficult ones.

Essay type questions

The most complex of the lot, essay-type questions are not commonly taken through digital portals since assigning software as an invigilator is difficult. However, when such tests are assigned, a professional educator accompanies at least ten students to see over examination proceedings while students write their papers. There are four types of essay questions;

• Open-ended
• Long answer descriptive type
• Application based

Open-ended and application-based questions require students to think more since there is no one specific answer. Exam generating software and data detection systems cannot check long answer-type questions because of this characteristic.

Answering strategies

Essay-type questions usually come with choices. During assigned reading time, students should choose the question. For example, out of six given questions, students can attempt any 5. Students must read all the questions during the reading time before the exam starts and choose the one they can answer with all facts and finish within time. Some answers might look easy but are too lengthy. Avoiding lengthy answers can improve the quality of the remaining portions in the answer sheet.

Which question strategy is your school adopting? Don’t hesitate to practice other examination formats, even though your institution is not actively using them. It is wise for students to understand and know the answering strategies of every examination type. After all, the more they know, the better they learn.