Abstract:

Midterm exam score often forms part of the final evaluation of the course. Midterm test is used in the elementary Mathematics for economists course at the Prague university of business and economics. In response to the covid-19 pandemic and switch to distance learning, the structure of the test has been changed to include also take home mini tests. The new structure has been inspired in the structure of the mid term exam even after the resume of the classical on-site teaching. The midterm test now consists of eight small tasks which may be solved by the student at home, each within one week, and four tasks to be solved by the student at the exam in the classroom. The student may obtain up to 20 percent of the final score from the midterm exam. The final score totals to 100 points and the student needs to reach at least 60 points to obtain the passing grade in the course. The paper investigates how well the score in the midterm exam predicts the success in the final exam. The evaluation is performed using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and the factors which may affect the exam scores are analysed. The random sample of 103 students of the course is used for the evaluation. The evaluation of performance of prediction of the final result (passing the exam or not) using the score of the midterm test as the predictor has the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve equal to 0.81. This shows that the midterm test predicts the final result of the exam very well. The correlation between the midterm test score and the overall exam score minus the midterm test score proved statistically significant at 0.05 significance level. The 95% confidence interval has been calculated as 0.4 - 0.67. The impact of Faculty of study as well as the way of admission did not prove statistically significant impact on the overall exam score, the evaluation has been performed using the Kruskal Wallis test.

Keywords:

Midterm exam, take home tests, ROC curve, mathematics.