Re: ::: vuaskari.com ::: Dr. Naveed Malik's reply about paper pattern

Its good to talk about improvement of any kind. But why are we talking about exams only. How about more assignments instead of just 4, more quizzes, more gdbs etc. these would enable students to get more practice and consequently to attempt any kinds of exam, MCQs or subjective. Also , how about 2 assignments every week with solutions posted the very next day. That would surely improve students' learning.

As for students getting more marks than deserving on account of MCQs, I dont quite agree with that. I think one had to do indepth study to attempt the paper, as it consisted not only of mcqs ,but descriptive questions of 3 and 5 marks as well. I think we need to be fair here. If you guys want to make testing tougher, then you need to make materials provided more stimulating, let students have more practice quizzes and assignments, post assignments that got the highest grade for everyone to see, and solutions and feedback given more promptly. Infact the whole interactive experience needs to be enhanced then. Just revising the paper pattern would be a very myopic approach.

On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Muhammad Umair <muhammad.umair.491@gmail.com> wrote:

Assalam o Alaikum

Dr. Naveed didn't agree too much with me that change of paper pattern lead to degradation of VU. But, I did give him suggestions about paper pattern.

Here was what I wrote to him about paper pattern.

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Sir, please do something of this exam pattern. MCQs paper pattern is not a good paper pattern.

Students get too much marks in this subjects. Too many even though they don't know that particular subject that well. It happened with me on a number of occasions too.

Sir, I will give you a little example which I also give to my fellow students to tell them that MCQs paper pattern is not a good paper pattern and we get more marks than actually we deserve.

Sir, I took admission in VU in Fall 2007 semester. Sir, at that time, I observed by seeing results of different subjects that how much difficult or easy a particular subject is. I saw the final term result of Financial Management (MGT201) in Spring 2008 semester and noted that there were almost 70% students who failed in this subject. No other subject had higher percentage than this. I considered this subject the most difficult subject that was being taught at VU. And I remember highest marks in that subject in that semester were 77 or 78. But no one got A grade. This happened when only 10-15% portion was of MCQs and rest of the questions were long/theoretical/numerical questions.

Sir, when I see the result of this subject now a days of other students. They get A grade very very easily. How it is  possible? Also, you can check the percentage of students who fail now in this subject and compare it with percentage of students who failed when there was long questions paper pattern. You will come up with a huge difference.

I only talked about Financial Management above. However, you can also compare percentages of other subjects that I considered too much difficult by seeing their results. Some of them are Research Methods, Assembly Lanauge, Statistics, Calculus, and many others.

Sir, students see past papers and just memorize MCQs (most of students), attend the exam and manage to pass it.

Sir, no one can at least memorize long questions, especially numerical questions can't be memorized. One has to practice them to learn. Furthermore, luck can work in MCQs but not in long questions. One can tick mark any option of MCQ and that option can turn out to be correct. But to write answers of numerical questions one has to practice and learn.

Sir, I have even seen such students who don't know how to compute derivatives and integration in Calculus and still they pass MTH101 subject. This never happened in long questions paper pattern.

Sir, I have seen such students who don't know how to make a balance sheet or profit and loss account and still they manage to pass MGT101 Financial Accounting.

same can be observed with other subjects too...

Sir, MCQs also affected some of my subjects. I got more marks in some subjects when I didn't knew subject that very well.

I hope, you will look into my suggestions about exam pattern.

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and see his reply..

Umair,

You have made your case quite strongly. I will look into the
statistics for the various courses you have mentioned. Changing the
proportion of MCQs vs Essay type questions is very doable and will not
cause any problems (except perhaps, a longer grading time).

Please also let me have your comments about the long/essay/numerical
questions. Are they up to the mark or are they too easy also?

Then I replied as follows... (check my suggestion about the fact that students don't cheat in assignments)

Sir, here are my comments about Long, theoretical and/or numerical questions.

Sir, I will talk about such questions that are given both in assignments and exams.

Let's talk about assignments first. Sir, I have observed that many instructors don't provide such questions in assignments that can judge the ability of students. They give quite simple questions on occasions. Sir, when I studied CS410 (Visual Programming) course two semesters ago. It was second assignment (I think) of this course, instructor gave a question to write a program and that program was NOTHING. Sir, we were given to write a program of which a similar coded example was given in handouts and you know what we had to do of ourselves to complete that assignment. We were just required to change the text in double quotes "Hello World" to "Student Name: this and VUID: this". Furthermore, most of assignments in that semester contained questions in which we were asked to write answers to theoretical questions instead of programs. Sir, theory does have importance in Programming, but this does not mean that we should give all importance to theory and very little importance to programming.

Secondly Sir, I have a suggestion about assignments of some subjects. Sir, there is a homework helping website of U.S.A. www.cramster.com. It has been more than a year that I help that community in their questions related to Mathematics. Sir, having spent much time on that website, I noted many things of U.S.A.'s education that I think can be applied without any difficulty to our VU education as well. 

Sir, once I saw a question posted on that website which was in somewhat following format.

Solve the following system of Linear Equations.

x₁ + x₂ = 5

2x₁ + 3x₂ = a    (where a is the last digit of your student ID)

Sir, VU instructors can also ask such questions in assignments (to avoid copy among students). This may not work in all subjects, but this will definitely work in many subjects like in Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, Numerical Analysis, Discrete Maths, Statistics etc. etc. This will also work in some selective topics of Data Structures, Algorithms, Automata. I can't say about MGT courses but those who are expert in MGT subjects can definitely tell you whether such approach will work in such subjects or not.

Sir, let's come to such type of questions in exams. Sir, I am much satisfied with long questions asked in exams. But, I noted from past two or three semesters that in many subjects long questions of 10 marks have disappeared and they have been replaced by questions of 5 marks. I think, long questions of 10 marks need to come back in exams too.

Sir, you are right that increasing number of long questions will definitely require more time to check answers. I think the only choice for VU will be to increase the number of tutors.

Regards

Umair

Fellows, what you think now about paper pattern? Dr. naveed malik is looking into statistics that I mentioned in my email about MGT201 course and also many others. It is damn true. 

I hope, we will see long paper pattern again in VU.

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