Abstract:

Performance evaluation at the university entails several challenges. Designing good tests to measure performance or knowledge requires time and effort. The development of exams is time consuming and professors usually do not have too much time to design parallel forms of the same test to avoid cheating. In this paper we present our experiences developing one test per person in the degree of Psychology and Criminology at our university. We have used R programming language to design short tests to assess the performance and knowledge in statistics and data analysis. The contents of tests were related with introductory and descriptive statistics and were printed in paper. We administered one of those tests per week and assessed competence achievement in a formative evaluation framework.

Two functions per exam were generated:
a) a function to create a set of personalised tests containing open questions, and
b) a function to automatically correct individual exams.

Our method to test knowledge and performance reduces cheating and allows quick correction and feedback to students.

Keywords:

Individualised tests, data analysis, statistics, formative assessment, university.