Information System Major in University of Brawijaya’s Computer Sciences Faculty (FILKOM UB) held a Learning Evaluation Workshop and Test Item Development for two days (31/3/2017-1/4/2017).
Herman Tolle, Dr. Eng., S.T, M.T as the Head of Information System Major of FILKOM UB said that this activity aims to increase lecturer’s competence and improving evaluation standards of learning in FILKOM, especially Information System Major. Also present in the event was Malang State University’s Secretary of Educational and Learning Development Institute (LP3 UM) Dr. Eddy Sutaji, M.Pd.
Eddy explained that in the process of learning there are three important things that must be considered, learning goals, learning process, and assessment or evaluation of learning. Learning goal became the basis of determining the method that will be used in learning process or type of learning evaluation instrument.
Meanwhile, assessment or evaluation is a process to find out one’s ability on certain competence, based on evidence. Assessment/Evaluation in education has an important role to determine achievement of learning goals that has already been designed. To conduct evaluation an instrument of evaluation is needed.
Eddy said that there are several kind of research instrument including observation, interview, performance test, written test, note review, and report writing. Instrument of evaluation must meet the three criteria including validity or accuracy of device to measure a learning result, reliability that is related to consistency, stability and instrument’s ability, and instrument’s practicality in relation to the instrument’s ease of use, time required, and ease of scoring and data interpretation.
“To measure someone’s ability observation is not enough, it must be tested. Creating a good question for a test is not easy. A good question must be able to measure someone’s ability and measure learning goal rate of achievement,” Eddy explained.
In creating evaluation instrument there are some steps that must be followed in order to create a good and valid question to measure the test participant’s ability. First a frame of outline in the form of table containing type of material that will be tested, goal of test, level of question, and the form of test. There are six different level of questions from the goal of learning to evaluate ability to remember and recognizing material, questions that aims to measure the ability to interpret, giving example and explaining something, questions that aims to test ability in implementation of the material, questions that aims to test the ability to analyze, differentiate, and organize something, questions that aims to test the ability to evaluate something, questions that aims to test ability to create something.
“Multiple choice questions can only measure ability up to level 4. The advantage of multiple choice question is that it can cover many materials and the scoring is easier,” Eddy said.
On the next step, questions will be created based on the frame of outline, questions must be examined, tried out, and revised if correction is needed, only then the questions can be given to the test participant.
On that occasion Eddy also gave some tips related to creation of evaluation instrument. He said that university-level student learning goal is to be able to analyze something, so level-4 question on the evaluation instrument must have the bigger proportion. For example 60% of the total amount of the questions. Multiple choice questions also should not use negative sentences such as exception. A penalty system where correct answer adds point, wrong answer reduces point, and unanswered question worth 0 point should also be applied to multiple choice questions. This should be done in order to avoid student that answer by guessing.
“With this penalty system the test participant will be more careful in answering the question, they will not guess it. If many test participants answered the questions by guessing the learning result will be difficult to evaluate,” He said.
Herman said that all the material and tips acquired from the workshop will be applied to the Information System Major. On the second day of the workshop, there would be a discussion of points that will be applied to the learning evaluation.
“So far we only began to create questions when a test is coming, such as middle terms test or final test. Now we will change the system step by step. A system where lecturer began to create questions on every finished one or two chapter of learning. Then the questions will be added to the question bank. Creation of questions will also start to use the frame of outline as a basis,” Herman explained. [dna/UB PR]