Negative Points: Allowing a negative result for the whole test

1 Requirements

When you look at the test settings you have two options handling negative points in tests:

• Cutting negative points at each question
• Cutting negative points at the whole test

Currently you have no option – and this is the missing third one we will propose here – not to cut negative points at all.

Background and application

In progress test in veterinary medicine we have to deal with single choice questions with the following scoring scheme:

• a correct answer leads to 1 point
• a incorrect answer leads to -1 point
• the answer "I don't know" leads to 0 points
• an unanswered question leads to 0 points

One objective is that the participants learn to assess themselves, if they honestly think they know an answer or not. The progress test is held each year and the questions cover content of the whole study program. So ideally for one student the test result should getting higher each year. In case the test result is negative, it would indicate that the student cannot assess his/her knowledge very good or was not honest to his/herself.

2 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: Mirco Hilbert, Mirco.Hilbert@hrz.uni-giessen.de
• Interest in funding: (please indicate if you are interested/able to fund this feature)
• Maintainer: (will be set by Jour Fixe / maintainer)
• Implementation of the feature is done by (will be set by Jour Fixe / maintainer)
• Testcases by: (please add your name if you want to create the testcases for this feature)

3 Discussion

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], Oct 26, 2015: We ask the SIG E-Assessment for a statement if this is a valuable feature. We have concerns about a compliance of a such a feature with current examination regulations.

Slotosch, Sven [sven.slotosch], Dec 11, 2015: We (heads of SIG EA) are concerned about a feature, which allows a negative result for a whole test. According to current examination regulations giving minus/malus points for a whole question and transfering them to another question is not allowed for tests with a legal grade. We fear that for an examination setting with a legal grade, such a feature could mislead lecturers to use this feature for their special “interests” and, overall, break the law. This could create a negative image on e-examinations. This feature is not an option for summative e-examination scenarios (with legal grade). To avoid misusage of a progress-test-setting we suggest this feature to be allowed exclusively by administration and not be part of the standard test setting. In addition to that there needs to be a (technical) remark that using this feature may lead to an offence against examination regulations. A solution like this would be the only suitable one for us. Besides, we recommend to clean up the test settings and not to overload them through additional settings that are only relevant to few people.

4 Implementation

{please give a description of the final implementation and add screenshots if possible}

Test Cases

Test cases completed at {date} by {user}

• {Test case number linked to Testrail} : {test case title}

Approval

Approved at {date} by {user}.