FIFTH POSTING : ONLINE TEST

Personal Experience on Taking Online Tests

Welcome back to my blog everyone! How are you all getting on? Hope all of you are in the pink of health by God’s grace. Well, this is my fifth posting and my lecturer has given me a different task this time where all of my course mates and I are required to attempt an online test during the tutorial session and write about the results that I have obtained from the online test and the experience of taking it. Actually, we are required to attempt two online tests; The first one is Electronic Malaysian English Competency Test - Reading Test (Set 1) and the second is "Kemahiran Asas" ICT.

For your information, the following are the results which I have obtained from the two online tests:

1) Electronic Malaysian English Competency Test - Reading Test (Set 1)

Score : 22 out of 35 - 63%

Time Taken : 10min 26 sec

2) Online Quiz Results : Kemahiran Asas ICT

Your Score : 24/30

Online Quiz Results Summary

Your Attempts : 1

Total Class Attempts : 578

Your Quiz Score : 24/30

Your Highest Score Ever : 24

Note: This may not a final marks anywhere. Due to some of the sections of examination (subjective and semi-objective questions (short essay and fill in the blank) not yet included.

An online test is simply a test which you take sitting at a computer console via the Internet. Instead of paper and pencil, it's all mouse action. Within a few seconds of finishing the test, your score (for an ability test) or the analysis of your personality is emailed to the examiner.

Taking these online tests is my second experience because I have taken an online test before when taking my driving licenses 7 years back. I would to say that taking the online test after such a long time is very interesting indeed. The Electronic Malaysian English Competency Test - Reading Test (Set 1) was based on four reading passages which can be found in a particular website and we were required to answer multiple choice questions too. Even though normally we think that objective questions are easy to answer, but here the passages were very complicated which needed a lot of focus, concentration and wise thinking. In orther word, the online test is tough!

Furthermore, the disadvantage of taking an online test is, you will never know when a system and the server would be down. This is an experience which I have faced when the Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage the moment I finished answering the entire question and pressed finish. It was very frustrating because I couldn’t retrieve back what I’ve done, so I have do it all over again. In my point of view, this is a disadvantage of online tests.

The second online quiz that was taken on the same day was "Kemahiran Asas" ICT which is an online test that is used to grade the level of computer literacy among students and others. The questions which asked were from all levels as some of them were easy as we use the application of it in daily lives but most of the questions were really confusing. This is not because we do not know much about computers and the applications but it was because we are not very used to the terms used in the computer world. This is the reason as to why the score is not very encouraging.

Multiple choice or true and false online exams are very popular at institutions with enrollment that does not follow any geographic boundaries. The advantages are a shorter list when using this model. First, the exams are available online so the students can access them anywhere at any time. Second, the pool of questions on the exams can be randomized to reduce the possibility of sharing answers. Third, the exams can be automatically scored online with the scores then available to the student and the instructor, saving the instructor many hours of grading. Fourth, students can get immediate feedback on their work when the exams are graded online. The disadvantages are numerous, but can be categorized as "technical difficulties". The primary disadvantage from an instructional standpoint is the poor ability to accurately reflect student learning using these sorts of test questions. Once you move on from the instructional problem, you run into a seemingly infinite list of possible technical problems. Students can become very creative when their grade is at stake. For example: "I dropped my calculator on the keyboard and the test submitted" (shall I ask the student how the calculator happened to bounce on the enter key since you must select enter to begin the submit process and again to choose the yes command for submitting), "something must be wrong with my server because it says that my quizzes were submitted but I did not take them" (interesting how the server not only submitted the quizzes, but filled in answers as well), "I cannot access my quiz to submit the answers but here they are" (amazing how you were unable to access your quiz yet it was submitted so all of the correct answers were returned to you with your grade of zero. Could it be that you were able to write all of the correct answers down after you submitted your quiz blank and the answers were sent back to you with your score of 0%)… Needless to say the list goes on.

In conclusion, I have learnt many new aspects of computer technology which is very helpfull in increasing the level of my general knowledge in this competitiv and globalization world. I would not forget this wonderful experience and i will continously use whatever i learnt in this course in all my future undertakings.