Testing and evaluation are essential parts of the education process. They are used to assess students' knowledge, skills, and attributes. Developing high-quality tests and rigorous evaluation standards can help institutions achieve their goal of producing highly qualified students. However, effective testing also requires careful curriculum design and professional question setting that considers students' responses and the evaluation process. The questions should cover all curriculum content in a balanced way without repetition. Relying solely on question banks is a poor practice, as it does not encourage original questions and can allow students to predict future exams. Proper key and scheme development are also important to guide accurate evaluation and reduce errors in the examination process.

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Testing and Evaluation: Are they the Teachers’ Mindset?
Dr. D. Kannan
Department of Botany
Thiagarajar College
Madurai – 625 009
dekan_c@rediffmail.com
Preamble
From time immemorial, for various reasons – selection, rejection, acceptance, elimination,
certification has been done for finding out the materials, objects, industrial products, people
(individual as well as groups). However, the core idea is for i) choosing the acceptable one and
ii) selecting the outstanding or the best among all the performers and iii) fulfilling the basic
requirements of selecton.
Uniqueness of academic quality
Students are tested on their performance and skills in the class rooms and in the examination
process for the level of academic qualifications. Testing process testify the knowledge, skill and
exploring the attitude and attributes of an individual. These factors have the indispensable and
fine interlinking connectivity in between them and also inseparable. These are usually evaluated
to certify the students and also to suite to the needs of the employing agencies or to the
institutions, offering higher level courses and research programmes. To achieve the mission of
making students with high academic qualities, quality testing and high standards of evaluation
procedures are required to be followed.
Testing
Asking questions to write, to solve the problems, synthesizing ideas, debate on the postulations
and concepts, memory testing through standard procedures and protocols and contribution to the
survey, monitoring and also in the case studies are the usual requirements, for which the
stakeholders have been tested. The task of question setting is taken by the teachers, tutors,
mangers and group leaders and most often, it has been arranged by the managers with the
capable testing personnel.
The requirement of the question setter should have multiple approaches. It requires the fine
alignment of the core components of curriculum design, the students’ or the stakeholders’
response to the question and finally the evaluation process, eventually appraising the response.
Hence the virtual outlook of the question setter for the fare reality and the real impact of the
question and the way it has been required to be coordinated between the curriculum designer and
student taking up the exam and the evaluator. If the link is perfect, then only the goal of quality
testing and evaluation can be achieved.

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Curriculum design – Foundation of testing
A meticulous work, alike in designing and fabricating an ornament or a component to a machine
for its perfect working producing the flawless products and similar skills are required to design
the curriculum. In the syllabus, the forthcoming unit should be cohesively continuous to the
previously available chapter. It should not be jam packed and should not be loosely made as
well. In some cases, repetition of question is unavoidable in various sections of the question
paper, when the syllabus is very light and not more than one or two sentences.
It is inevitable to carry out the responsibility of the curriculum design to include the complete
contents of the course, spreading into carefully chosen units comprising with the basic concepts,
principles, diversified categories, and applications and prompting towards the scope and future
prospects of the course. The curriculum should be designed in such a way to think, analyze and
also to improve the intelligent quotient of the student which would prompt them to undertake
research on the courses.
Question setting – Is that the mindset of the examiner?
Question setting is the foremost important practice, prior to evaluation. The complex nature of
answers is to be brought out through simple and professional means. The way of questioning
should not seem to be monotonous. As a matter of fact, in an aggregation of 20-25 questions,
about 5 or more questions starting either with ‘Explain’ or ‘What’ or ‘Describe’ or ‘Write’ or
‘Give’ or alike chanting words will be looked by anyone including who take up the exam as the
least valued one, even though the questions cover fairly all the contents of the syllabus.
Picking up of questions from question bank is yet another bad practice in the question setting.
Question bank is a material to make students to acquaint with the sample questions and it should
be prepared for the use of students to prepare for the exams. It is also to use to cross check,
when discrepancies rise with the available question and key answers. Question bank should not
be relied upon the question setting by the question setter, when the questions are expected as
original and fresh for the exams. A clever student will identify and expect the forthcoming
question when the series of question papers are made using question banks. This practice will
further lead to the teacher not to read and to fall in the rut. The practice of using question bank is
most often encouraged by some institutions, reluctant to spend money or by some managers,
retired from teaching, which is a serious problem to concern.
Legitimate writing is also essential attribute of the question setter for the examination office staff
to reproduce the exact question thought by the setter in the print form, to be reached finally to the
student at the examination. Some of the question setters writing are very much like the medical
prescription, from which the typist or the examination manager has the difficulty in
understanding the matter. Sometimes the artistic and cursive writing done by the question setters
are also mistaken by the typist. Some of the question setters finely done the assignment by
sending the hard copy done by computer print-out; however the typographical errors (more
seriously when the word ‘the’ is printed instead of ‘they’) needs to be avoided as far as possible.

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The correct usage of string characters, notations, chemical formula and structures, illustrations,
symbols and numbers are needed to be written/typed with special care and checking after
finishing the question once again are required to be followed.
Timely preparation and sending the question papers are the most important responsibility of a
question setter. It is better to decline when the choice is given, instead of promising to send the
question paper(s) and forgetting to do that. The work taken after the deadline often ends with
undignified work and sores up the entire procedure by serious mistakes and the worst outcome of
the examination process.
Key- The Catalyst
Key preparation is an art. Analytical problems are easily made for its solution. However the
complex solution requires to be made with the properly constructed subsequent steps.
Descriptive types of answers are to be made with the hints and break up of marks for the
components of the answer. The key answers are to be written along with the exact code given in
the question paper. Mismatching of the code and the answer leads to confusion during paper
valuation and this can be sorted out by checking properly. When the questions or the entire
question paper has been changed under some circumstances, then the key or the scheme of
valuation has to be rewritten accordingly before to the reach of the valuing examiner.
Values of valuation
Not all the papers are valued by two or more examiners different from each other. There is a
famous saying that “Not two examiners values similarly; likewise none of the examiner values
similarly at two times on the same paper”. This is true; however, taking these facts in mind, the
paper valuing personal should have the correct judgment and also her/his valuing nature towards
to be genuine and the ambience should not affect her/him in the valuation.
End-note
Examination process tests the ability of the stakeholder, especially students and it is being done
by testing and evaluation. The ultimate aim is to bring out the analytical representation with
greatly reduced errors. This is achievable when the question setting and evaluation are done in
the error – free and with the real commitment of the teaching community. It is of paramount
important for a real examination reforms rest completely on the true interest of the teachers upon
the students’ academic pursuit.