TEST QUESTIONS STOCKPILED AND EXAMS CREATED AND SCORED BY COMPUTER SYSTEM AT MIAMI-DADE MEDICAL CAMPUS By Beverly T. Watkins originally appearing in _The Chronicle of Higher Education_, October 16, 1991, pp. A-25, A-39 -Miami- A computer based program called Test Banking Service is easing the pressure at examination time for students and members of the faculty and cleri- cal staff at Miami-Dade Community College's Medi- cal Center Campus here. The service stockpiles instructors' test questions in a data bank, creates examinations and scores them, and enters students' marks in a grade book, all by computer. The service frees secretaries, who used to spend hours typing and retyping tests, to do more productive work. And it lets students find out quickly how they performed. "It's neat," says Hettie P. Greene, anassociate pro- fessor of nursing, who used the service for the first time last semester. "Before I had the test-bank service, I wrote questions out on the typewriter and sent them to a typist. They came back with typos in them, and the turn-around time was a week or more," she says. "Now I get the tests back in two days. That's a substantial savings in time." -Help for Professors at Stressful Time- Security is another plus, she says. "You know where the questions are. They're not hanging around someplace." Mrs. Greene, who teaches nursing fundamentals, says her students like the test program, too. "They know what happens after each quiz. If they don't get the grade they want, they will be in to see me before it is too late." The Test Banking Service is the product of six years of effort by the medical center to help faculty members at a stressful time. The center, one of five campuses in the Miami-Dade system, took its first crack at a test bank in 1985 when it installed a database program on its mainframe computer. The program was so cumbersome, however, that only a few people skilled in computer programming could use it. "We all agreed that we should be in the business of item- banking," says Carleen M. Spano, who was associate dean of advising, counseling, and testing at the time. "We had secretaries typing piles of tests over and over again. We knew their efficiency would shoot up 900 per cent if we could get them out of the test-typing business." However, she remembers, the mainframe program was "ter- rible." "When microcomputers became available, we put the test bank on them. But the faculty were frightened of microcom- puters. They called them microconfusers," says Mrs. Spano, who is now associate dean of academic services. In 1986, determined to provide what it regarded as a necessary service, the campus created a position called "Test-bank specialist" and hired Robert B. Mitchell, a com- puter programmer, to fill it. Although Mr. Mitchell got the test bank to work, it re- mained flawed. "Only one or two instructors used it," he re- calls. He spent the next three years searching for an alterna- tive. Today, the Test Banking Service operates with a software program called "ParSYSTEM." It runs on a Zenith computer con- nected to an optical scanner and a laser printer. Instructors can store questions in their own personal banks or in banks established for particular courses or in both. Using a printout of the bank, instructors select ques- tions, which can be objective--multiple-choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank, or matching--or essay, or both. They give a work order with their selections to Mr. Mitchell, who makes up the tests. The computer can print up to four versions of a test, scrambling the order of the questions and supplying answer keys for each. -As Many as 300 Questions- To complete a test, which may include as many as 300 questions, students mark answer sheets that can be read by a scanner. Instructors themselves read essay questions, assign- ing them numerical scores that can be entered on the answer sheets. After it has scored a test, the computer sends the marks to the instructor's grade book. The computer also analy- zes the test results for the instructor and supplies a list of scores that can be posted for the students to check. To build test banks for faculty members, Mr. Mitchell uses a procedure called "importing," which lets him transfer information from the diskette on which the instructor writes the questions directly into the computer. -Catching On Quickly- Although the ParSYSTEM software offers this feature, Mr. Mitchell says, he had to write a program so his word processor would convert the questions into a format the test bank would understand. When he first came to the campus, says Mr. Mitchell, instructors gave him their typed questions, and he had to type them into the bank. "I did about 100 questions a day," he says. "With importing, I can do 500 questions a day and they don't have to be retyped." The Test Banking Service, which is still being refined, is catching on quickly among faculty members. Mr. Mitchell estimates that between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of the instructors now use the test bank. In 1988-89, he says, he received about 400 work orders-- a request for one to four tests. Two years ago, that number had increased to more than 500. Last year, he says, it was 650. In January, Mr. Mitchell added the grade-book func- tion to the Test Banking Service. About 30 per cent of the instructors tried it, he says, and most of them liked it. By the end of the nest two years, he predicts, 60 per cent to 80 per cent of the faculty members will by using the grading option. "I don't expect 100 per cent of the faculty to use any of these programs," says Mr. Mitchell. "Some prefer to do tests on their own, while others say, For 20 years I have been doing it this way.' They are not about to change now." By and large, administrators and faculty members give the Test Banking Service high marks today. -Some Give More Tests- Ms. Spano, the associate dean, says the bank has encouraged faculty members to improve their examina- tions. "The test bank forces them to have a one-on- one relationship with their test questions," she says. "If you have to go through a list of 300 questions, the tendency is to read and reread and review them more. You won't just give your old test." Mr. Mitchell says the service has also led some faculty members to make tests a more integral part of instruction. "Because it's easier to have tests printed, in- structors can give more," he says. "Some faculty mem- bers now require two versions of the same test--one that students have 10 minutes to complete and a sec- ond they have 20 minutes for. One is to find out what the students know off the top of their heads. The other is to find out what they know when they have time to think about it. Darlene A. Kelly, an assistant professor of nursing, says the computer analysis of test scores helps her locate trouble spots in her courses. "The item analysis tells me the percentage of people who chose the correct answer on the test," she says. "If a majority of students chose A, for example, that tells me they have the concept right. If not, they have a problem. Ms. Kelly adds, "I can use the item analysis as guide to teaching. I can say, You guys split 50-50 on this question. What were you thinking when you selected this answer?' Then we can have further class discussion." -They Learn a Lesson- If any question arises about the results of a machine-scored test, says Ms. Kelly, she will hand- score the test. "If students think the machine marked the test wrong, we sit down together and go over it," she says. "Sometimes the problem is how they students made the mark on the answer sheet. Then they learn a lesson." With more faculty members using the Test Bank- ing Service, Mr. Mitchell acknowledges that his job is becoming increasingly time-consuming. However, says, "through the service I am able to save the faculty quite a lot of time." Also, he adds, "as the workload increases, I get better at streamlining the system." -30-