Testing as an Effective Method for Assessing the Quality of Students' Training Achievements

Electronic educational resources including testing, which simplify the process of searching and structuring educational information have been used more often in educational organizations recently. They have made learning more accessible and interesting for students of higher and vocational education institutions, especially in the context of a pandemic. The article provides a brief theoretical justification of the advantages of testing students' academic achievements. The emphasis is placed on the importance of testing as a tool for remote control of students' knowledge, the advantages and disadvantages of using tests both in the educational process of higher and secondary vocational education and in order to control the acquired knowledge are revealed. The study was carried out by the authors on the basis of a comprehensive use of theoretical and empirical methods. The leading theoretical methods were: analysis, generalization, concretization, forecasting, modeling. The work used such empirical methods as conversations, pedagogical observation, questionnaires, expert evaluation, testing, analysis of performance, generalization of pedagogical experience, methods of statistical processing of experimental data. The results presented in the article of the study of testing of students of MPSU at the initial (entrance test), current and final stage of measuring the level of educational achievements of students demonstrated an increase in the values of the effectiveness of testing at all stages of its implementation, an increase in the effectiveness of test control at the intermediate and final stages of the study. The results of the study made it possible to formulate promising directions for the development of problems of testing the quality of education of students of higher and professional education organizations: improving the forms and methods of analysis and interpretation of test results based on the invariant application of test models: improving the psychological and pedagogical orientation of the use of the testing algorithm for personalized learning trajectories in the practice of mass education, etc.

Burnout, does the university entrance test failing attribute? A Bangladeshi exploratory study

Getting admission into a university is highly competitive globally and can be regarded as a mental stressor for some individuals. In Bangladesh, most of the universities allow students to repeat the test, whereas repeat test-taking students are supposed to suffer from psychological issues like burnout because of academic non-achievement in their first attempt. But there is no prior study assessing burnout to the population, which was investigated herein. A cross-sectional study was carried out among a total of 911 Bangladeshi university entrance test-taking students (i.e., 49.5% first-time test-takers). The survey measures included socio-demographics, admission-related issues, and mental health problems (depression, anxiety, and burnout). Of the mental health problems, depression, anxiety, and burnout were assessed by the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD-7), and Maslach Burnout Inventory—Student Survey (MBI–SS), respectively. In light of two-dimensional and three-dimensional cutoff schemes of the MBI—SS, about 43.7% and 17.3% of the test-taking students, respectively, were classified to be burnout in the total sample. Additionally, 48.1%, 71.4%, and 49.1% of the students in the total sample reported higher emotional exhaustion, higher cynicism, and lower academic efficacy, respectively. In respect to the student status, two-dimensional burnout (48.0% vs. 39.2%; χ2 = 7.164, p = 0.007), and emotional exhaustion (52.2% vs. 43.9%, χ2 = 6.789, p = 0.034) were significantly higher among the repeat test-taking students. Satisfaction with previous mock tests, depression, and anxiety were the associated factors of burnout in all three samples. Based on the present study, it can be concluded that the university entrance test appearing students are highly prevalent to burnout, and the rate increases with academic non-achievement. As the first study assessing burnout to the population, the findings are anticipated to be helpful for policymaking and further studies both inside and outside Bangladesh.

‘Dress Code’ Controversy: A Victim of Misogynistic Mindset or Something Else ?

In the middle of September 2021, a female candidate wearing ‘shorts’ (the so-called ‘half pant’), hailing from Biswanath Chariali, went to Tezpur to appear at an entrance test of Assam Agricultural University (AAU) at Girijananda Chowdhury Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (GIPS), one of the agencies of AAU. While the gatekeeper of GIPS gave her access, the invigilator on duty at the examination hall raised eyebrows on her ‘dress code’ but allowed her to sit in the examination, coercing her to drape a curtain to cover her legs. Doing so, the invigilator not only trespassed into her personal space— her body; humiliated her by lowering her dignity. This perspective is an attempt to revisit the debate of the dress code of Indian women, which refuses to die even in 21st Century India.

Validating English Language Entrance Test at a Saudi University for Health Sciences

This paper aims to validate the English Language Entrance Test for King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Science (hereafter KSAU-ET). It supports the argument regarding using specially designed in-house entrance tests at health universities by showcasing the test’s development, administration, and validation process. It presents a new framework for test validation that is informed by various existing frameworks such as Messick (1996), Sireci (1998) and, Weir (2005), with a specific focus on the notions of unitary and practicality. The proposed framework treats validity as a pre-, during, and post-test process that collects evidence from each phase to support the test’s overall validity. The data were collected using different tools and through the three stages of the validation process. The test was taken by 474 candidates who applied to join KSAU-HS Stream II medical program. The data confirmed that the test was reliable (alpha > 7) and reasonably meet the university’s needs to select the program’s top prospective candidates. Nevertheless, the study highlighted the importance of collecting further evidence in future studies and including more selection criteria in the regression model of analysis. Using this framework, the study contributes to the existing body of research that investigate English entrance test validation. It shows that exam validity is a context-sensitive process strongly associated with the purpose for which the exam is used. Finally, the paper discusses pedagogical implications that may help educators at health science universities develop in-house entrance tests in place of standardized tests, which often do not address context, curriculum, or program objectives.

Science Graduate Employability and English Language Proficiency: Findings from a Malaysian Public University

This study investigated the relationship between the employability of science graduates of a public university in Malaysia and their English language proficiency. Utilising a quantitative research design, the study involved 3,918 graduates from the 2015, 2016 and 2017 graduating years. Using available secondary data, three variables were examined: the graduates’ employment status, their English Language course results, and their Malaysian University Entrance Test (MUET) results. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and Chi-square test. Findings showed the number of unemployed graduates was consistently greater than employed graduates although the unemployment percentage decreased progressively each year. No conclusive evidence however could be ascertained to suggest English Language proficiency as the main determinant affecting employability since the highest number of employed and unemployed graduates were from the Intermediate and Upper Intermediate language proficiency range. This points to other factors impacting employability which higher learning institutions may need to address in order to add value to their graduates’ future work credentials.

Fostering mathematical modelling competency of South African engineering students: which influence does the teaching design have?

This paper reports on empirical results about the influence of two different teaching designs on the development of tertiary students’ modelling competency and attitudes towards modelling. A total of 144 first year engineering students were exposed to a diagnostic entrance test, a modelling unit consisting of five lessons with ten tasks, enframed by a pre- and a post-test, and at the end a questionnaire on attitudes towards mathematical modelling. Similar to the German DISUM study, in the modelling unit, one group of participants followed an independence-oriented teaching style, aiming at a balance between students’ independent work and teacher’s guidance, while two other groups were taught according to a more traditional teacher-guided style. Linear mixed regression models were used to compare pre- and post-test results. The results show that all groups had significant learning progress, although there is much room for further improvement, and that the group taught according to the independence-oriented design had the biggest competency growth. In addition, this group exhibited more positive attitudes than the other groups in five of six attitudinal aspects.

Validating English Language Entrance Test at a Saudi University for Health Sciences

This paper aims to validate the English Language Entrance Test for King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Science (hereafter KSAU-ET). It supports the argument regarding using specially designed in-house entrance tests at health universities by showcasing the test’s development, administration, and validation process. It presents a new framework for test validation that is informed by various existing frameworks such as Messick (1996), Sireci (1998) and, Weir (2005), with a specific focus on the notions of unitary and practicality. The proposed framework treats validity as a pre-, during, and post-test process that collects evidence from each phase to support the test’s overall validity. The data were collected using different tools and through the three stages of the validation process. The test was taken by 474 candidates who applied to join KSAU-HS Stream II medical program. The data confirmed that the test was reliable (alpha > 7) and reasonably meet the university’s needs to select the program’s top prospective candidates. Nevertheless, the study highlighted the importance of collecting further evidence in future studies and including more selection criteria in the regression model of analysis. Using this framework, the study contributes to the existing body of research that investigate English entrance test validation. It shows that exam validity is a context-sensitive process strongly associated with the purpose for which the exam is used. Finally, the paper discusses pedagogical implications that may help educators at health science universities develop in-house entrance tests in place of standardized tests, which often do not address context, curriculum, or program objectives.

Classification and Prediction of Students’ GPA Using K-Means Clustering Algorithm to Assist Student Admission Process

Background: Student admission at universities aims to select the best candidates who will excel and finish their studies on time. There are many factors to be considered in student admission. To assist the process, an intelligent model is needed to spot the potentially high achieving students, as well as to identify potentially struggling students as early as possible.Objective: This research uses K-means clustering to predict students’ grade point average (GPA) based on students’ profile, such as high school status and location, university entrance test score and English language competence.Methods: Students’ data from class of 2008 to 2017 are used to create two clusters using K-means clustering algorithm. Two centroids from the clusters are used to classify all the data into two groups: high GPA and low GPA. We use the data from class of 2018 as test data. The performance of the prediction is measured using accuracy, precision and recall.Results: Based on the analysis, the K-means clustering method is 78.59% accurate among the merit-based-admission students and 94.627% among the regular-admission students.Conclusion: The prediction involving merit-based-admission students has lower predictive accuracy values than that of involving regular-admission students because the clustering model for the merit-based-admission data is K = 3, but for the prediction, the assumption is K = 2.

Musical skills, or attitude and dress style? Meaning-making when assessing admission tests for Swedish specialist music teacher education

Although entrance test criteria seem decisive for accessing higher music education programmes, and problems and challenges with the assessment process are reported, the area is largely unexplored. This article concerns how entrance auditions, specifically primary instrument auditions for Swedish specialist music teacher programmes, are examined and discussed. The data comprise video-documented auditions, focus group conversations, and stimulated-recall-based interviews involving assessor groups at four music education departments. Social-semiotic theory is used to study how assessors judge applicants’ knowledge representations in audition performances. A music-centred assessment culture is constructed, emphasising assessments of technical, communicative, and genre-anchored interpretation skills essential for meeting the demands of the education and profession. Also, a person-centred assessment culture is revealed, emphasising the assessment of personal traits suitable for education and profession. The discussion addresses the reliability, credibility, and validity of assessing abilities in terms of being and behaving in a particular way.