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- Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 23:30:06 EST
- Sender: EDTECH - Educational Technology <EDTECH@OHSTVMA.BITNET>
- From: "Ian M. Richmond" <imr@uwovax.uwo.ca>
- Subject: Re: Computer Administered Testing
- Lines: 37
-
- My department has been administering a written placement test
- by microcomputer for the past three years. All students wanting
- to register for a first-year level course in French must take it.
- This amounts to about 700 students at present. The software used
- is an "in-house" program written in Turbo Pascal 5.0 by myself
- and the Faculty of Arts' programmer (We split the programming
- tasks.). The test is in a multiple choice format with questions
- emphasizing grammar and vocabulary. Separate scores are maintained
- for the grammar and vocabulary components. The test is time-limited
- to 50 minutes, at the expiration of which the test stops. Once the
- test has stopped, or the student has answered all the questions,
- the program computes the vocabulary score, the grammar score and
- the overall score and, using a weighting table, produces a list of
- courses for which the student is eligible. This is all printed out
- in duplicate in the form of a report which the student must take to
- an academic counsellor for registration in a course.
-
- To keep the program as simple as possible for the students, the
- only typing required is at the beginning, when the student is
- asked for a name and an ID #. Answers are selected by pressing
- the space bar to move a highlight from one answer to the next.
- The highlight wraps back to the first answer when it reaches the
- bottom of the list. The selected answer is entered by striking
- <Enter> key. The student is then asked to confirm the answer by
- striking the <Enter> key again. Striking any other key allows the
- student to select a different answer.
-
- The date, student name and number and the three scores obtained
- are recorded in a comma-delimited text file on the computer's
- hard disk. These files are used primarily for gathering data
- on numbers of students, levels achieved and placements.
-
- The test program is also used, in slightly modified form, for
- testing students in certain Spanish courses.
-
- Ian M. Richmond, Department of French, University of Western Ontario,
- London, ONT, CANADA N6A 3K7. E-Mail: IMR@UWOVAX.UWO.CA
-