Using short written answer questions in exams

Hi I’m Trish from Speedwell. In this clip we are going to look at using short written answer (SWA) questions in exams.

SWA question Set-up

Here we’ve created a short written answer question. We’ve populated the author, the code. We’ve written the question text, the title and we’ve almost completed the model answer or the marking scheme for the examiner to use when marking the SWA questions. We’re just going to finish it by adding a couple of extra points at the bottom. Then check the maximum score and save.

Exam Delivery

Once the exam has been published and is ready to take. This is the screen that the candidate sees. It’s a mixed Multiple choice and short written answer, it’s timed. The candidate reads the question and adds their answer in the box below and once they have done that they can move on and finish the exam.

SWA Exam marking

And this is what the examiner sees when they are marking a completed exam. They can organise it by candidates by question or questions by candidate. There’s various ways to navigate forwards and backwards through the system. We can see the candidates that have already been marked. We’ll mark this question now. So the examiner will read the question, they’ll check the model answer or the marking scheme. They’ll compare that to the candidate answer which is displayed in the box below. Then decide on the mark to give the candidate and enter that mark in the box above. Not exceeding the maximum score which is displayed on the right hand side. And then move on to the next question or the next candidate.

Candidate Feedback

One of the ways which we can feedback to the candidate is the online candidate feedback report. We see the candidate details at the top, the exam. So the student can see the score, the average score, the exam grade etc. We’ve grouped the written answers and the choice answers and the top blue bar shows the students’ score for the written answers in the exam compared to the average, which is the red diamond and the same for the choice answers below. We can also see the written answers as a raw score, compared to the average raw score and the performance arrow shows the student whether they appears in the top 25, the middle 50, the lower 25 or the bottom 5 percent of candidates. This is a nice way to look at the scores for the choice answers and the written answers in the same exam.

Contact us

I hope you found this clip useful, if you would like more information about, the speedwell eSystem or using short written answers in exams or would like to book a free demo, please contact us at speedwell software.com