STestGenerator – APPLICATION FOR GENERATING DIFFERENT TYPES OF EXAMINATION TESTS AND ITS USAGE IN BIOLOGY

Abstract

Student examination is very important and responsible part of teachers work. There are several types of written tests that are commonly used by science teachers in examination process, which are: essay tests (ET), tests with the task of remembering (TP), tests with fill-in tasks (TD), and multi-choice tests (MT). STestGenerator is an application which has been developed with the goal of helping teachers in preparation different types of examination tests. Using simple dynamic interface, user choose the type of test (TP, TD or MT), edit the database of questions, set parameters (desired number of tests, desired number of questions in each test, etc.). Then the program sets question order randomly, and generates tests in .txt and .html format, which are suitable for printing. During the processing the multi-choice tests, the program makes a database of correct answers which could be used for scoring. For the scoring, the user enters the answers for each test and the program generates the result. Usage of STestGenerator brings several advantages: individuality of student's work during examination, easy test generation of good quality, faster scoring process and low mistake rate during the scoring. Despite the fact that the software is initially written to be used in biology, it is applicable for any subject and examinations where these types of tests are suitable. STestGenerator is a multi-platform application written in Java programming language, and could be downloaded from the website of Teacher's Training Faculty Bijeljina.