Design of Question Paper

It is generally agreed that teachers need to evaluate the work of their students and
assess all aspects of their teaching to enhance students’ learning and improve their own
performance. Assessment includes collecting, judging and interpreting information about
students’ performance. It is not a separate add-on activity but an integral part of the learning
and teaching process. Its purpose is to provide reliable information and feedback to improve
and enhance the quality of learning and teaching. Suitable assessment enables
• students to understand their abilities and hence improve their ways of learning;
• teachers to understand the performance of their students so that suitable and timely
measures can be provided; and
• parents to understand the performance of their wards so that they can, in collaboration
with teachers, provide suitable support to help the learning of their wards.

Different modes of assessment serve for different purposes. Assessment for learning,
which is usually formative, focuses on the learning process and learning progress.
Assessment of learning, which is usually summative, focuses on the product of learning. As
both the learning process and product are important. In the summative assessment, frequently
the faculty members are getting the following issues from the students.

• “Too Lengthy paper....... to write”, (Theory Examinations)

• Time was not enough
• “All Questions from specific titles only! No Question from......”, (Theory
Examinations)
• “Questions were too vague, What to write ? What to cut?”, (Theory Examinations)
• “Long Questions were Bouncers! I have not been taught these” (Theory
Examinations)

This is happened due to the Examiner/ Teacher imparts instruction according to what 'she/he
thinks is appropriate or important'. The intended learning outcomes are not stated clearly and
therefore overlooked. Students get confused as they are unaware of what is actually expected
out of them and they suffer. Blueprinting in Assessment, can overcome these issues, if not
completely, to a large extent and hence make the assessment more valid. Blueprint is a map
and a specification for an assessment program that ensures that all aspects of the curriculum
and educational domains are covered by assessment programs over a specified period of time.
It is a two dimensional chart which shows the placement of each question in respect of the
objective and the content area that it test. In simple terms, Blueprint links assessment to
learning objectives. It also indicates the marks carried by each question. It is useful to prepare
a blue print so that the test maker knows which question will test which objective and which
content unit and how many marks it would carry. The blue print concretizes the design in
operational terms and all the dimensions of a question (i.e. its objective, its form, the content
area it would cover and the marks allotted to it) become clear to the test maker. The blue print
is called Table of Specification (ToS).

The purpose of a Table of Specifications is to identify the achievement domains being

measured and to ensure that a fair and representative sample of questions appear on the test.
Teachers cannot measure every topic or objective and cannot ask every question they might
wish to ask. A Table of Specifications allows the teacher to construct a test which focuses on
the key areas and weights those different areas based on their importance. A Table of
Specifications provides the teacher with evidence that a test has content validity, that it
covers what should be covered.
Designing a Table of Specifications
Tables of Specification typically are designed based on the list of course objectives,
the topics covered in class, the amount of time spent on those topics, textbook chapter topics,
and the emphasis and space provided in the text. In some cases a great weight will be
assigned to a concept that is extremely important, even if relatively little class time was spent
on the topic. Three steps are involved in creating a Table of Specifications: 1) choosing the
measurement goals and domain to be covered, 2) breaking the domain into key or fairly
independent parts- concepts, terms, procedures, applications, and 3) constructing the table.
Teachers have already made decisions about the broad areas that should be taught, so the
choice of what broad domains a test should cover has usually already been made. A bit
trickier is to outline the subject matter into smaller components, but most teachers have
already had to design teaching plans, strategies, and schedules based on an outline of content.
Lists of classroom objectives, curriculum guidelines, and textbook sections, and keywords are
other commonly used sources for identifying categories for Tables of Specification. When
actually constructing the table, teachers may only wish to use a simple structure, as with the
first example above, or they may be interested in greater detail about the types of items, the
cognitive levels for items, the best mix of objectively scored items, open-ended and
constructed-response items, and so on.
A Table of Specifications benefits students in two ways. First, it improves the validity of
teacher-made tests. Second, it can improve student learning as well.
A Table of Specifications helps to ensure that there is a match between what is taught and
what is tested. Classroom assessment should be driven by classroom teaching which itself is
driven by course goals and objectives. In the chain below, Tables of Specifications provide
the link between teaching and testing.Tables of Specifications can help students at all ability
levels learn better. By providing the table to students during instruction, students can
recognize the main ideas, key skills, and the relationships among concepts more easily. The
Table of Specifications can act in the same way as a concept map to analyze content areas.
Teachers can even collaborate with students on the construction of the Table of
Specifications- what are the main ideas and topics, what emphasis should be placed on each
topic, what should be on the test? Open discussion and negotiation of these issues can
encourage higher levels of understanding while also modeling good learning and study skills.

For Example, the following table is ToS for the Computer Communication and Networks,

Step 1:
Define the following
1. The type of things the student should be able to do (i.e. ABILITIES)
2. The subject matter in which he should be able to do them (i.e CONTENT)
A Table of Specifications is a two way-chart, which relates CONTENT andABILITIES by
assigning suitable weightages for testing purpose.

Programme : B. Tech – Information Technology

Semester : V Semester
Subject : Computer communication and Networks (Code Number : XXXXX)
Abilities Remember Understand Apply Higher Total

Content order
Recognize Recall 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2
abilities
(No. and
Name
of the Unit)

Total 100

Step 2:

Assigning weightage to the various units of the content

Factors to be considered:

1. Number of periods allotted for teaching the unit

2. Usefulness of the content matter of the unit in the student’s job or every day life
3. Usefulness of the content matter of the unit in understanding other units of the same
subject
4. Usefulness of the content matter of the unit in understanding other subjects prescribed
for the programme

According to step 2,

Weightage for abilities and content need to be defined.

CATEGORY OF ABILITY WEIGHTAGE

Remember (R) 20%

Understand (U) 60%
Apply(Ap) 20%
Higher order abilities 0%
Total 100%

Imparting Content
Unit / Module No Unit Name
in Percentage
 Unit / Module 1 Network Design 18%
Unit / Module 2 LAN Access methods and Standards 15%

Unit / Module 3 Packet Switching Networks 18%

Unit / Module 4 TCP / IP Architecture 22%

Unit / Module 5 Advanced Network Architecture and Security 27%
Protocols

Abilities Remember Understand Apply Higher Total

Content order
(No. and Name Recognize Recall 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2
abilities
of the Unit)
Network Design 5 2 0 0 0 0 2 4 0 0 18

LAN Access 0 3 0 0 0 4 4 0 4 0 0 15
methods and
Standards
Packet Switching 0 3 0 0 0 0 2 4 4 5 0 18
Networks
TCP / IP 0 2 0 22
Architecture
Advanced 27
Network
Architecture and
Security Protocols
Total 20 60 20 0 100

The ability and content details are updated in the above the table. After updating the details,
you have check the each cell where the question can be designed. Finally, the two
dimensional table will be filled with values

Abilities
Remember Understand Apply Higher
Content order Total
(No. and Name
Recognize Recall 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2 abilities
of the Unit)

Network 5 5 2 0 0 0 0 2 4 0 0 0 18
Design
LAN Access
methods and 0 3 0 0 0 4 4 0 4 0 0 0 15
Standards
Packet
Switching 0 3 0 0 0 0 2 4 4 5 0 0 18
Networks
TCP / IP 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 3 12 5 0 0 22
Architecture
 Advanced
Network
Architecture 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 5 10 5 5 0 27
and Security
Protocols
Total 20 60 20 0 100

Once the values are finalized, the start to design the question paper. The cornerstone of
classroom assessment practices is the validity of the judgments about students’ learning and
knowledge (Wolming&Wilkstrom, 2010). A TOS is one tool that teachers cause to support
their professional judgment when creating or selecting test for use with their students. The
TOS can be used in conjunction with lesson and unit planning to help teacher make clear the
connections between planning, instruction, and assessment.