Facilitating Millennial Generation, IPB Students Experience Online Midterm Exam
Entering the Midterm Examination (UTS) of the academic year 2017/2018, Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management (FEM), Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), began to apply Internet Based Exam (IBE) or online exam. Internet-based exams are intended to address the needs of millennial generation that has been very intensive exposure to digital media. This online test is also considered more effective and efficient, because IPB no longer needs to spend the cost to print the question and answer sheets.
According to Eka Dasra Viana, Chairman of the Education Commission of Management Department of IPB, the online exam has been implemented since two years ago. But it is still limited to comprehensive exams only.
"The internet-based test only applied for comprehensive examination before, but currently it is applied to UTS and UAS (final exam)," she explained.
Some courses which use IBE system are Product and Price Management, Service Marketing, and Marketing Management.
Meanwhile, Dr. Mukhamad Najib, as coordinator of Product and Price Management course and Service Marketing Service course, said that there are some advantages if the campus uses IBE, namely students are accustomed to the online test model.
"Nowadays almost every agency carries out an online exam for a job-appointment test. By habituating an internet-based exam on campus, it will help students to prepare for an entry test into the workplace. The second advantage is that the assessment process can take place quickly with online test. Lecturers usually need time to be able to correct the hundreds of answer sheets, but now with IBE, the test results can be issued in real time, because the lecturers do not need to correct it again," explained Dr. Najib.
"Another plus is the cheaper cost because there is no more printing and more in line with the spirit of IPB as a green campus, " he added.
Despite its many advantages, Dr. Najib also reminded several things to notice in carrying out internet-based exams. Lecturers still have to make the test questions well in accordance with the learning outcomes that want to be tested.
"The exam is one of assessment methods of whether or not the students have achieved the learning objectives that have been set. Therefore, the lecturers should still be guided by how to measure the achievement of this learning objective in making the exam questions," he concluded.
It is not easy for lecturers who use this IBE to create essay questions. Thus, extra effort is needed in making exam questions that are intended to measure the achievement of learning outcome. Similarly, it is often not easy to create problems to measure the achievement of learning outcomes that are demonstrating if you want to apply IBE. (TK)
