Abstract:

Introduction:
The subject ”Law in Medicine” is designed for students at the first year of the 2nd degree of Nursing and is realised in form of a lecture (25 hours) and seminars (10 hours). Seminars that were devoted to the subject of civil, criminal, employee and professional responsibility of a nurse were completed with an oral exam. Students answered two open questions and then analysed a study case. There was, however, a possibility of being released from this part of an exam. During each of the five seminars, it was possible to achieve between 1-3 points for substantive activity during classes. Collecting 10 points released a students from having to take an oral part that preceded the final test (e-test). Using a motivating system based on points for active participation in seminars is one of the methods that foster systematic work in students throughout the whole semester. However, for such a solution to fulfil its role, it should be characterised by objectivity and reliability.

Aim of study:
Comparative analysis of compliance of educational measurement based on the system of motivating points and the results of an oral examination against a summative evaluation achieved for solving a final e-test.

Materials and Methods:
Snapshot data of 152 students of Nursing at the 2nd degree studies qualified for the study; students participated in the class “Law in Medicine” at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Medical University of Warsaw (MUW) in the academic year 2014/15. Two subgroups of students were identified: students released from an oral exam on the basis of points for being active (group 1, N = 95); students included in the oral exam (group 2, N = 57). As a comparative criterion determining the quality of motivating evaluation / oral exam, the results of test comprising of MCQs (multiple-choice questions) were used; the test was generated using an ASK Systems platform designed to be used in e-evaluation. Each student participating in the final exam could choose one of the 11 available dates. For each round of examinees, there was a unique set of 30 MCQs drawn from the database of 200 questions. To increase the control over independence in solving tasks within the test set of questions, they were presented randomly with variable sequence of individual options.
The analysis was performed using correlation gamma statistics. The calculation was done in a software package STATISTICA 12.5 (StatSoft©, Inc.) according to the MUW licence. For all analyses, the a priori level of significance was established at 0.05.

Results:
For students from group 1 there were no statistically relevant dependencies between the degree of activity during educational classes and a result achieved by a student in the final exam (gamma statistics = –0.12, P > 0.05). Whereas in group 2, it was observed that evaluation in the oral exam correlates significantly with the number of points achieved by a student in the final e-test (gamma statistics = 0.25, P = 0.046).

Conclusions:
A high degree of subjectivism concerning evaluation of students’ activity in classes is fostered by a situation where people insufficiently prepared are accepted for the final exam. Results of correlation analysis allow to assume that the oral exam that precedes the final exam in form of an e-test is much more reliable that the system of motivating points.

Keywords:

E-assessment, oral exam, educational measurement, summative assessment, motivation to learn, outcome-based education.