Abstract:

The Matriculation Examination in Finland is the conclusive final exam arranged at the end of high school. The first electrical Matriculation Examination will be arranged in 2016 for three subjects, namely German, Geography and Philosophy. At 2019, the exams for all 27 subjects are answered and assessed in electronic form. Electrical exams provide a lot of potential advantages over traditional hand-written exams. These include automatic and perhaps immediate assessments, easiness of typing answers and adaptive exams. However, not all of these allowances are used in the beginning of electrification of the Matriculation Examination.

The first experimentation of the electrical Matriculation Examination in Finland was organized in Mynämäki upper secondary school’s preliminary exam in 2013 utilizing ViLLE. ViLLE is a web-based collaborative learning environment with extended support for electronic exams. ViLLE also collects automatically data on student behavior during the exams. After the first experience, some further exams with similar setup have been conducted.

Using the data obtained from the experiences, we analyzed the students' time usage during the electrical exam of the English language. The exam is divided into multiple different parts which, in principle, students were allowed to answer in a free order. The results show that regardless of this, the students answered one question at time in a chronological order without returning or refining their answers later. The reference group was obliged to answer the questions in a predefined order. It was assumed that this makes the examination much more difficult, but according to our studies, this is not the case.

We also analyze students’ opinions on electronic exams in general, electronic Matriculation Exams, and ViLLE as an exam platform. The results show that students seem to prefer electronic exams over traditional ones, and would have taken the actual Matriculation Exam using ViLLE, if possible.

Keywords:

Matriculation Examination, E-assessment, Automatic Assessment, Immediate Feedback.