Abstract:

INTRODUCTION
The important relationship between assessment method and the quality of learning in higher education has been firmly established in the literature. In order to improve the quality of student learning by promoting better assessment methods, in this paper we reflect on our methods of evaluation through statistical analysis of the results of two assessment methods from students’ scores in three subjects of the degree in biology: multiple-choice question examination and short answer.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Participants were 593 students enrolled in three different Biology courses between 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 academic years. The exam included both MCQs and short answer items to test the same content areas. Statistical analyses were carried out using statistical package SPSS 18.0 Significant differences between group means of measured variables were determined using t tests. In addition, we measured the magnitude of these differences using effect size. To estimate the correlation between different assessment methods we have calculated the Pearson r coefficient.

RESULTS
The results show that scores obtained with the MCQs are always lower than short answer exam. The magnitude of differences in academic scores measured effect size is medium. This suggests that assessment method has significant effect on students’ achievement scores in this survey. Moreover, differences between scores achieved in MCQs and short answer questions are significant in all courses by academic year. However, correlations between multiple choice questions scores and short answer scores are high in the three courses

CONCLUSIONS
This study has revealed two important findings: 1) Firstly, the assessment method is a very important factor in scores obtained by students. However, in order to choice an assessment method, we must relate this method to other factors that influence the educational context. 2) The second important finding is that although there is a strong correlation between students’ scores on MCQs and short answer questions, there are significant differences in mean scores on both methods.

Keywords:

Assessment methods, multiple-choice question examination, short answer assessment.