In recent years distance education and learning have emerged as a popular method of instructional delivery in engineering and technology-related fields. Many faculties of engineering and technology may found themselves teaching online classes or thinking about teaching one. In this process, crafting and preparation of online exams without sacrificing the educational quality and exam security is a crucial issue to the faculty. Psychological setbacks and barriers among engineering students also add another concern for the faculty teaching in a distance education environment, i.e., students may have fears of losing partial credit in an online multiple-choice exam. The asynchronous and economical advantages of distance education and learning that make offering and taking them very popular force the profession to reexamine and re-engineer some of these exam-related issues. In this paper we discuss issues as they relate to crafting online exams for the distance learning students in engineering and technology. More specifically, we discuss one major theme: how should faculty craft and design online exams for students studying in engineering and technology-related fields? We use some accurate but crude empirical data and evaluation methodologies to draw our conclusions. The data used are collected from more recent sample courses that have been taught by the authors over the last five years. This facilitates the evaluation of the latest challenges, development of new methodologies, and monitoring the current trends.
Distance learning is recognized in the engineering and technology-related education profession as an attractive method of instructional delivery. The asynchronous and economical advantages of distance education and learning make offering and taking them very popular. The fast pace availability of the technology and its rapidly changing environment compel the profession to constantly evaluate, address, re-evaluate and re-engineer some of the assessment-related issues. In this article, we discuss some aspects of online performance assessment in distance learning environments in engineering and technology. The article is built on the foundation laid by many previous studies and articles by the authors and others. It encompasses discussions on effective techniques on the use of technology for online student performance assessment. We rely on our own many years of online teaching as an experiential instrument in the former parts of this study while we use statistical analysis in the later part of the paper. The data used are collected from recent sample courses in engineering and technology taught by the authors and their colleagues. We conclude that the currently available automated robust and effective online assessment tools are significant in pedagogical assessment in engineering and technology. The results are confirmed through our discussions with the colleagues having similar experience at some other institutions of higher education. We plan to expand our database and revalidate our study through collaborative data-sharing efforts with our colleagues across the States in the near future.
In recent years distance education and learning have emerged as a popular method of instructional delivery in engineering and technology-related fields. Many faculties of engineering and technology may found themselves teaching online classes or thinking about teaching one. In this process, crafting and preparation of online exams without sacrificing the educational quality and exam security is a crucial issue to the faculty. Psychological setbacks and barriers among engineering students also add another concern for the faculty teaching in a distance education environment, i.e., students may have fears of losing partial credit in an online multiple-choice exam. The asynchronous and economical advantages of distance education and learning that make offering and taking them very popular force the profession to reexamine and re-engineer some of these exam-related issues. In this paper we discuss some background and lessons learned from our experience with crafting online exams for the distance learning students in engineering and technology. We use some accurate but crude empirical data and evaluation methodologies to draw our conclusions. The article's discussion encompasses six faculty concerns of security, interactivity, equity, hands-on demonstration of concept, team-workability assessment, and ethics, all related to crafting online examinations in engineering and technology. Some of the results presented here are also confirmed intuitively through our informal discussions with the colleagues having similar experiences. We conclude, from our experiences, that in "open and honest" learning environments such as those in most institutions of higher education in the United States, the most important focus should be on the "ethics" education of the students before they can take online examinations in a non-proctored examination environment.
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