An evaluation of the conduct of the online quiz at a public university in Malaysia

This study evaluated the use of the online quiz as part of the formative assessment for Mandarin as a third language (MTL). A questionnaire was designed to investigate three aspects, namely, academic honesty, students´ satisfaction in doing the online quiz, and students´ preference between the online quiz and the manual quiz. Two hundred and nineteen (219) MTL students who studied in three different levels of the Mandarin course answered the questionnaire in May 2013. The findings indicated that more than half of the students received help from course mates while answering the online quiz. Overall, students from all levels were very happy to have the online quiz as part of the assessment. They strongly recommended that future students should also be given the online quiz as there are more pros than cons in having the online quiz as compared to having the manual quiz. However, students were reluctant to do the online quiz in the computer labs of their faculties. Nonetheless, this study proposes a solution to control misconduct during the online quiz. The most effective way is to have the online quiz done in the computer lab of the faculty under the supervision of a lecturer. Some detailed steps to conduct the online quiz have been outlined in the paper.