[LIS-Forum] InfoQuiz2005- Mysore University LIS students Online test, fairness etc

Wed May 11 20:14:05 IST 2005

Dear All,

At the outset, as some one directly involved/connected with the two
instances  University of Mysore, Students Test and the InfoQuiz 2005 (as
I was the Project Leader), I would like to offer my response to many of
the issues raised by Ms. Suvarsha Walters in her mail online tests,
quizzes, pedagogical issues, fairness in general and online testing in
particular. Though I am tempted to go into a detailed discussion-I will
try to be as brief as possible. First a general disclaimer 'I am not
claiming that all is well with Online Testing/Quizzing, in the same way as
in any evaluation! No method or system is fool proof or fair!'
Philosophically speaking - there is nothing fair in this world as
nothing is absolute and everything is subjective/relative. Each one of us
is advantaged /disadvantaged due to one or the other factor and there in
enters the  fairness /unfairness factor! Can we compare the advantages
of being at a privileged institution such as IISc with all the facilities
to that of other less privileged institutions with no facilities? Is it
fair to compare at all? Can any comparison be on equal footing? Can we
ever offer a level playing field in any arena? The fundamental question is
what is an advantage and what is a disadvantage? Everything comes with a
price attached-including the advantages.The disadvantages many a times
spur the motivation and determination to succeed !
George W Bush won the elections in the year 2000 and went on to become one
of the powerful men in the world- was his election a fair one? When a
critical and highly consequential process as political elections are a
chance factor, what do you make of quizzes which are known -perhaps in all
fairness, in some countries as - trivia?
More importantly, both the instances were not of serious nature-something
that would affect the career or future. The Infoquiz2005 was a competition
and the objective was edutainment- create an academic event of fun and
excitement. Long-term objective is to create an identity and fuel an
interest in the field, which is still evolving.
The second instance was actually a kind of class test (that too a
retest)  organized mainly to give the students another chance, excite
them and of course to train them in taking online tests. One of the
students was  I guess, carried away by his enthusiasm of being able to
take a test while being away, perhaps was a trifle  too enthusiastic to
report it in the LIS  Forum.
Coming to the specific issue of Online Quiz /Test. We must understand that
Online Quizzes belong to the Open Book Exam variety , which is
considered as an innovation and more in tune with reality. Open Book test
variety is generally considered a hard nut to crack and therefore believed
to raise the bar for learning. Over thirty and odd years ago Alvin Toffler
in his best selling book Future Shock (1971) in a chapter entitled
"Education in the Future Tense" decried the fact that we are educating our
children to live in the past rather than in the future. One key element of
our education system is the way in which we test our students. There are
several reasons why closed book testing is not considered a valid method
of testing. One argument is that they are pure memory oriented and the
other is that classroom does not represent a real world scenario as once
out of the classroom; the student will always have access to whatever
resource materials are needed for the problem at hand.
Open Book Quizzes in themselves are considered great pedagogic tools as
they create an interest to find answers. If our objective is learning,
then testing should also be learning oriented. Studies have also shown
that quizzes entice students to find the correct answers to the ones
that they have got it wrong. Psychological studies reflect that one never
forgets the ones that went wrong!Quizzes offer some unique advantages  as they allow students to submit
the quiz upon completion and immediately receive the quiz score and
correct answers with explanations, providing instantaneous feedback on the
quiz etc. Further more, students gain experience taking computerized
examinations, which are a very common format today in the world. Many
studies have also shown that students are quite enthused about the
quizzes.Coming to the InfoQuiz 2005- keeping the Open Book format in view, the
questions were generally selected in such a way that  a simple Googling
would not get the answers- I personally Googled before posing  those
questions!  That is also the reason for the strict adherence to the Time
Factor  those who took more than one hour were disqualified even when
they got higher score!  We had also tried to balance between pure LIS and
IT/INTERNET related topics to offset these advantages.We have done an analysis of all the responses and it does not indicate
that searching the INTERNET has been the factor for high score either.
The simplest question on Soople  answer to which could have been found
by a simple Google search was answered correctly by a mere 26% of the
people who took the online quiz.Finally coming to the issue of Engineers the question perhaps hinges on
who is an Information worker? One of the objectives of the InfoQuiz was
create an interest in the field and a brand for the profession and so
welcomed the interests of the engineers for InfoQuiz.  Incidentally
Garfield was a chemistry graduate with a Ph.D in structural linguistics
and the winning team - Garfield Team had an interesting combo of one
chemical engineer and one NCSI student. Do you call this fair or???LIS profession has always welcomed specialists and contributions from
other domains and has been enriched because of that very reason.-----
Shalini
Dr. Shalini R. Urs
Director
Information and Communication Division
&
Professor and Chairperson
Department of Library and Information Science
University of Mysore
Mysore-570006
India
Tele:91-821-2514699
Fax :91-821-2519209

Suvarsha Walters said:
> Hello all,
>
> One has to question the fairness of online tests if what is at stake is
> very  significant - like if you are conducting it to select students
> for a course  etc. It gives ample scope for malpractices, like
> searching the Internet or  taking the help of an expert to answer.
>
> The recent quiz conducted by Informatics had four B.E. candidates out
> of the  six who qualified for the finals. A significant number of
> questions in the  quiz were related to LIS profession. So we have to
> question if online tests  are really as wonderful as they seem to be.
>
> This is not to critize Informatics, because they did a great job. This
> is to  highlight the shortcomings and take it into account for the next
> time.
>
> Online tests are great if it is just an evaluation of what has been
> studied  and the student benifits by being able to take the test at
> his/her own time  and place.
>
> This is a good tool. But we need to be careful while using it.
>
> with regards,
>
> Suvarsha
>
> Suvarsha Minj, Project Assistant,
> National Centre for Science Information
> Indian Institute of Science,
> Bangalore - 560 012
>
> ************************************************************************
>
>
> On Sun, 8 May 2005 15:40:54 +0100 (BST), shashi kumar wrote
>> Dear Sir/Madam,
>>
>> Glad to inform u that recently Dept of LISc, University of Mysore,
>> has conducted on line test to its students. really a good effort
>> towards modernising LIS education. One of the student was able to
>> attend the test via Internet sitting in his hometown.Such kind of an
>> effort really helps to learn more about cutting-edge technologies  and
>> its implications in LISC. A good approach we all benefited lot
>>  from this. we hope that such kinds of efforts will continue and
>> helps to compete in the global village. thanks to the chairperson  and
>> all the faculty of Dept of LIS.
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------> ------------------------------------
>> "Kowledge is productive only when it is applied to make a difference"
>>
>>       -Peter Drucker
>>
>> Shashi Kumar A.A.
>>
>> Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partneronline.
>
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