EMPOWERING QUALITY QUESTIONS: GENERATING STUDENTS THINKING CAPABILITY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32461/2226-3209.1.2018.178804Abstract
Abstract. Addressing the agenda of education in the 21st century requires the commitment of educators to realise the potential of student’s thinking to be synthesised towards mastering their thinking capability at a high level. Therefore, this article is aimed to evaluate the degree of University of Terengganu Malaysia lecturers’ concern among in mastering skills in the formulation of questions, of different types and levels of difficulty, and to apply them in the context of student assessment that affects their thinking capability. Content analysis with a descriptive study together with a checklist instrument to investigate the difficulty level was applied to evaluate a total of 412 questions from 12 courses for the final examination of the program of study. The results showed that the majority of the questions (59%) were constructed using memory questions and only 1% were evaluation questions. Only 12% of the questions were
high-level and the rest (88%) were low-level questions. This result reflected that the question makers had neglected the importance of applying the multiformity of types and difficulty of the questions. Ergo, academic leadership should seriously monitor this matter as it will affect the credibility of the graduates and also education holistically.
Key words: thinking skills, question type, difficulty level of the question, question maker, quality of
questions.
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