Exams are a part and parcel of any education system. It is a gateway to test a student’s knowledge and his/her understanding of a subject. It enables you to identify the student’s skills and decide the level of improvement needed. It also creates a healthy competition among the students, which ultimately have a positive impact on their learning capabilities.

It’s been quite sometime now since tests and exams have shifted to the online mode. Online test was already enjoying great popularity and acceptance in the past few years. This popularity rose even further with the COVID-19 pandemic. Online exams and test series have always offered several benefits over the traditional pen-and-paper methods.

In this blog post, we will discuss in detail the significance of the online test series and how you can help your students through test series. You can also consider implementing a test series for your online academy in case you haven’t done it yet.

Benefits of Online Test Series

An online test series is typically an assessment tool that has been exclusively designed for students preparing for competitive exams. It aids these students to test their preparation levels, speed, time management, etc. Taking repeated mock tests helps in improving their chances of scoring high in the actual exams by boosting their confidence.

By registering for an online test series module, the students get to access multiple question papers, each with a variety of questions and varying difficulty levels. When the students are exposed to questions that mimic the actual exam questions, it helps them to crack the main exam easily.

Since the technology behind most of the online test series is fully automated, it helps in giving out instant results as soon as the test is submitted. As a tutor, there are several other benefits that you can enjoy. Here are they – 

• Easy to configure

Online test series does not require any complicated software or hardware mechanism since it works well on any browser. It is very common to see online test series designed exactly the same as the actual test including the user interface. This prepares the student to get a feel of the user interface of the actual exam in advance.

• Offer quality feedback

Online tests provide quality feedback once the test is submitted. This helps the students greatly as they get to know their performance (both overall and section-wise), answer key, percentile, and comparative analysis. The student can then self-analyze his/her performance based on the scores. Some test series also gives a detailed report of the areas in which the student is weak and needs improvement. 

• Cost-effective

The cost of investment for a tutor in an online test series is always lower as compared to a paper-based examination. You get to save thousands of rupees on printing the question paper.

Steps to create an online test series

As an instructor, you need to construct the test series in a way that helps you to evaluate the students’ knowledge correctly. The three basic steps in any test creation process are –

• Designing the test
• Preparing the questions
• Final Check

Step 1: Designing the test

To design an effective online test, you must identify what you want your students to learn. Your course objectives play a vital role here. Consider your objectives and plan to add questions that are related to the core concepts. Deviating from your objectives will not give the desired result and all your efforts will go in vain. Designing not only involves planning the question types and content but also the specific format of the test. Create different tests like speed tests, multiple-choice tests, or descriptive pattern tests based on the objectives.

Step 2: Prepare the questions

After freezing the type of questions and the test format, the next step is to start framing the actual questions. Though each pattern has a distinct procedure, there are some general rules to be followed in this step as well.

• Make the instructions for each question clear and simple.
• Language is a key factor in any online test. Use lucid language for your questions. This helps the students to understand the questions correctly and answer them in a way you want them. Language should never be a barrier to a test.
• Frame questions that require a basic understanding of the subject. Do not focus on questions whose answers can be copied word to word from the book. 
• For math questions, specify the precision requirement for quantitative answers ( For example, up to two decimal places).

Here are some specific rules for MCQ tests – 

• Give close choices intentionally to avoid guesswork.
• Place the occurrence of correct responses randomly in each question.
• Never give “none of the above” and “all of the above” options to all questions. This will prevent the students from thinking out of the box.

Step 3: Final Check

Do a final check which involves reviewing your test design for any improvements, checking the spelling and grammar of the questions, and verifying whether the test module is according to the course objective.

Best Practices in Online Test series

Conducting tests and creating questions is always fun, though it is a tough job. Once the test materials have been developed, the next step is to ensure the correct launch of the test series. The following points can be considered to make an effective launch – 

• Make the test link available to the students much before the test starts. This gives them plenty of time to log in, fix any issues with the system, and get used to the user interface.
• Some online test series platforms offer the possibility of multiple attempts. In such tests, unrestricted access should be given to the student to take the same test multiple times and the teacher can take the best score out of the repeated attempts.
• A few platforms let you employ force completion status in the tests. This option forces the student to take the test only when the link is activated and once they leave the test, it is automatically submitted and the student cannot enter again.
• Setting a timer to the test is a common practice in online tests. This feature not only notifies how much time is left for the test but is also used as a checkpoint to decide whether to allow the student to reenter the test page in case they were logged out due to connectivity issues. They will be allowed to enter only if they are within the set time.

How Learnyst helps?

Learnyst has a robust test engine that can help your academy to build online test series efficiently and effectively. With Learnyst you could conduct mock tests with thousands of concurrent learners. Apart from this, here are some key features of Learnyst specially built for conducting online tests with ease – 

• The test interface is exactly similar to the actual competitive exam. This makes the student mentally prepared before facing the actual test.
• You can set a timer running on the test page to indicate the time remaining to complete the test.
• You can schedule tests that ensure that the learners take the test only during a scheduled window.
• The tests come with an auto-save feature that automatically saves the test once the time runs out.
• You also get an advanced test result grading system. You can make use of this feature to give personalized messages to the students based on their scores.
• Your students can review the answers after they submit the test. The solutions to the questions are given so that the students can make use of it to prepare for the next test.
• A percentile score can also be given to the students.

For a detailed step-by-step procedure on how to create an online test series with Learnyst, click here.

What’s Next?

Now that you have seen how you can help your students through test series, it is time to implement one into your course. Sign up with Learnyst and create an effective online test series today. Evaluate both your student’s performance and your teaching effectiveness with it.