Abstract:

In Latvian schools for two years, research has been conducted on whether national examinations can be carried out both as traditional paper-based tests and online tests without their content or other components being lost. The number of students who participated in this research was sufficient to conclude that the results are reliable. The analysis of the results showed that there are no significant differences between paper-based tests and online tests if text and image insertions rules and differences are observed. Therefore, it is essential to continue to study the advantages of online diagnostic test compared to the traditional paper-based test. The content of the tasks was developed by the National Centre for Education, and the online environment was provided by uzdevumi.lv.

It is undeniable that the use of online tests helps schools save paper resources and printer toner powder, at the same time saving time for teachers. It should also be noted that automatic scoring of tests helps to eliminate human factor errors.

What other parameters of online national tests can be explored? The main advantage of online tests is that we are able to analyze the amount of time spent by students on each task. Filtering out invalid responses, it is possible to obtain and analyze information about the time spent by students on each task type (textual task, graphic task, matching task, multiple-choice task, etc.), as well as how much time students have spent on tasks of different cognitive levels. This parameter cannot be observed and analyzed in traditional paper-based tests. The total of 8197 students’ responses was analyzed in terms of the time spent on each task.

The novelty of the research: it is explored how much time students devote to each task, depending on the task type and the level of cognitive activity in an online national test. This parameter cannot be examined in traditional tests.

Research methods:
1) analysis of scientific literature;
2) descriptive statistics and dependency analysis were used to process the data.

The analysis of the research data was carried out using Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Test Analysis Program ITEMAN™ for Windows. The charts and tables were created using MS Excel and Tableau Public 10.4.2.

Keywords:

National Diagnostic Test, Online test, Information Technologies (IT), Cognitive activity level, Skills.