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Building an Efficient and Effective Test Management System  
in an ODL Institution 

Safiah Md Yusof 1, Tick Meng Lim1, Leo Png2, Zainuriyah Abd Khatab1  
and Harvinder Kaur Dharam Singh 1 

1 Open University Malaysia 
2 Impact Media Pte Ltd Singapore 

Abstract: Open University Malaysia (OUM) is progressively moving towards implementing 
assessment on demand and online assessment.  This move is deemed necessary for OUM to 
continue to be the leading provider of flexible learning. OUM serves a very large number of 
students each semester and these students are vastly distributed throughout the country. As the 
number of learners keeps growing, the task of managing and administering examinations every 
semester has become increasingly laborious, time consuming and costly. In trying to deal with this 
situation and improve the assessment processes, OUM has embarked on the development and 
employment of a test management system. This test management system is named OUM QBank. 
The initial objectives of QBank development were aimed at enabling the systematic classification 
and storage of test items, as well as the auto-generation of test papers based on the required 
criteria. However, it was later agreed that the QBank should be a more comprehensive test 
management system that manages not just all assessment items but also includes the features to 
facilitate quality control and flexibility of use. These include the functionality to perform item 
analyses and also online examination. This paper identifies the key elements and the important 
theoretical basis in ensuring the design and development of an effective and efficient system. 

Keywords: ODL, Assessment, MCQ, Question Bank, Item Bank, Test Management System 

Introduction 
One key feature of ODL institutions is the provision of flexible learning. The flexibility to learn in 
terms of time and locality is probably one main reason that makes ODL institutions a preferred choice 
of learning for working people and adult learners.  There has been a rapid increase in the learner 
population in many such institutions.  With the growth of the number of learners, the task of 
administering formal assessments such as developing items, maintaining item quality and conducting 
tests and examinations becomes tedious and laborious. In fact, the administrative processes of 
assessment and evaluation can become a nightmare for ODL institutions (Okonkwo, 2010).  The same 
issue is faced by Open University Malaysia (OUM), which started operation with only a few hundred 
learners but, in a period of just over a decade, the accumulated learners’ population has surpassed 
150,000.  As learner population keeps increasing, the administration of examinations for each semester 
has become increasingly laborious, time consuming and costly.  Every semester the assessment 
department of OUM faces the challenge of managing and conducting examinations for more than 



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25,000 students at 37 OUM learning centres throughout the country.  In every semester, new sets of 
examination papers are set. The process involves identifying and engaging qualified subject matter 
experts to prepare examination questions and marking schemes. This creates a challenge for OUM in 
making sure there is consistency in the quality of the examination papers prepared. The task of 
reviewing and moderating these examination questions and marking schemes is time consuming as 
well. Printing and delivery of examinations to the various examination centres and collecting and 
sending back the answer scripts to the examination department also becomes quite costly and 
challenging. Additional measures have to be taken to ensure security of the delivery of the 
examination papers as well as the answer scripts, to avoid any form of leakage.  Scheduling and 
administering the examinations must be done carefully and efficiently as well.  

The challenge of managing assessment and administering examinations to the masses is clearly not 
unique to OUM. Anadolu University, for example, serves about a million of students throughout the 
region, and the university made the move to create a test bank to house all the exam items created for 
the courses offered. Students can prepare for their examinations by completing practice tests online 
(Multu, Erorta, & Yilmaz, 2004). Exam booklets and optically readable answer sheets are printed and 
distributed with additional security measures to all the centers where the examinations are 
administered (Latchem, Ozkul, Aydin, & Mutlu, 2006).   There is clearly a need to leverage technology 
to minimize the issues and challenges related to assessment management and administration. OUM 
requires a test management system that not only helps minimize the manual processes involved in 
administering assessments, but also ensures the quality of the examination papers generated. In 
addition, the test management system includes functionalities for online examination that will support 
flexible entry and exit. This paper provides a detailed description of the design and development 
process of the OUM test management system, also named as OUM QBank system.    

Why a Test Management System?  
A test management system is not a new concept. It has long been advocated as a possible tool for 
managing effective and efficient tests and examinations (Choppin, 1976). Nevertheless, the traditional 
item banking systems are more of a basic test items storage system. According to Estes (1985) these 
systems support the mass storage and easy selection and retrieval of items used as examination 
questions. There was little emphasis on automating the generation of tests and also on the test quality 
control process. With the advancement of technology related to item banking development, it is now 
possible for learning institutions to develop more comprehensive test management systems that have 
much additional functionality, besides basic systematic storage and retrieval. Besides automation of 
processes, the important functionalities should include the capability of the system to ensure the 
quality and consistency of test papers generated.  

OUM QBank 

OUM QBank was designed with the main objective of reducing the laborious manual process of 
examination or test items preparation and administration and to ensure the quality of examination 
papers prepared. To achieve the objective, the design of an effective and efficient test management 
system should have the following unique features: 

 



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i) Systematic Storage Structure  

There are three kinds of assessment items to be stored in an OUM QBank. These items are: essay-type 
test items, multiple choice Question (MCQ items) and items in the form of assignment tasks. For the 
essay-type items and MCQ items, the storage is structured to categorize items based on the subject, 
topic and cognitive levels of difficulty. Figure 1 illustrates the structure of QBank item storage. The 
storage consists of 30 storage cells with each cell specified by topic and cognitive level, where T1C1 
[4/5] indicates Topic 1 Cognitive Level Low [4 items have been approved out of 5]. 

 
Figure 1: QBank Item Storage 

ii) Item Entry Interface 

OUM QBank is designed to provide a user-friendly interface for easy entry of items. Figure 2 shows a 
screen shot of the item-entry interface. The interface design allows the user to type items directly so as 
to be saved into the system. Alternatively the user may prepare the items in Microsoft Word and use 
the normal copy-paste method to deposit items into the system.  



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Figure 2: Item-Entry Interface 

iii) Table of Specification  

A table of specification serves as a guide in the preparation of examination questions. It helps to 
ensure distribution of topics and level of difficulty of an examination paper. Therefore, the use of a 
table of specification is an important step in the preparation of an examination paper. The table of 
specification is known as the Item Distribution Table (IDT) and is in the form of a table that displays 
the distribution of the examination questions for a given subject according to topics to be tested and 
the cognitive level of the questions. The table of specification is prepared based on the content of the 
learning module. This ensures that the test items are representative of the content being covered in the 
module. Having a good distribution of questions that are representative of the whole module also 
helps ensure content validity (Jandaghi & Shaterian, 2008). 

Another important dimension to be considered when building the table of specification is the 
distribution of items according to the different levels of cognition. The levels are based on Bloom’s 
Taxonomy, which states six levels of cognition: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, 
synthesis and evaluation, respectively. These six levels are clustered into three cognitive levels: Low 
(C1), medium (C2), and High (C3). 

OUM QBank is designed to allow the generation of tables of specification based on user-set criteria. 
Figure 3 shows the item selection or filtering criteria, which includes: 

i) Exam paper generation process – the user can select auto (for automatic generation of an 
examination paper) or manual (for manual settings for the exam paper generation). 

ii) Exclude past semester – the user can select the option that allows the system to exclude 
question items from one or several past semesters. 

iii) Include past semester – the user can select settings that allow question items from the 
predetermined semesters and the percentage of items from these semesters that are to be 
allowed into the current examination paper. 



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iv) Total number of items in paper – the user can set how many items of questions should be in 
the examination paper. 

v) Item complexity – the system will automatically compute and distribute the number of items 
according to Low, Medium and High cognitive levels. However, the user is able to make 
modifications within the range of total number of items. 

vi) Maximum items per topic – the user can decide to limit the number of times the items from the 
same topic are being selected randomly for each of the three cognitive levels. 

vii) Paper topic settings – the system will demonstrate an overview of the table of specification as 
shown in Figure 3a. It provides the view of the number of items per topic at each of the three 
cognitive levels. The user is able to view each of the generated items and decide whether to 
maintain the question or to re-select another item from the same topic. 

 
Figure 3: Specification Criteria for Examination Paper Generation 

 
Figure 3a: Table of Specification of the Examination Paper 



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iv) Test Paper Generation 

To minimize laborious manual tasks, QBank has formatted all the examination templates into the 
system. Once a test-specification table is generated, the system will be able to generate the test paper 
according to the required print-ready format.  

v) Item Analyses 

After an examination, the examination results can be imported into the QBank system to enable item 
analyses. The difficulty index and discrimination index for each and every item can be generated. The 
discrimination index describes the extent to which a particular test item is able to differentiate the 
higher scoring students from the lower scoring students. The item difficulty index shows the total 
group answering the item correctly. This information serves as a reference for the user on the quality 
of items that have been developed and to make decisions about how each item is functioning. This 
then helps the faculty to identify poor items that need to be reviewed, enhanced or to be discarded.  

Figure 4 provides a visual representation of the OUM QBank system framework with relation to the 
complete process of item preparation, test generation, examination, item analyses and item review.  

Stage1: Question Preparation and Review 

Course subject matter experts (SMEs) are assigned to develop question items. The question items are 
reviewed by item moderators before the items are stored according to the topics and cognitive levels.  

Stage 2: Examination Paper Generation 

The user can specify the output of the examination paper based on the table of specification criteria 
selection. The question items are randomly selected from each cell based on the selected set of criteria. 
The examination paper can then be generated based on the pre-determined format that was set for 
each course.  

Stage 3: Administration of Examination 

The system allows online tests as well as generation of physical examination papers. However, 
physical examination papers can be in both ‘Open ended questions’ and ‘multiple-choice question’ 
format. The online test is only in multiple-choice question format.  

Stage 4: Analysis of Quality of Items  

Data from students’ responses are accessible through the Online Marks Entry System currently used 
at OUM for multiple-choice questions. The data is further analysed using the difficulty index and 
discriminating index. Based on the analysis, items are further enhanced or discarded from the item 
bank.   

 



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Figure 4:  Framework for OUM’s Test Management System 

Figure 5 shows the login screen and Figure 6 shows the dashboard for QBank users, respectively. The 
functions that show will vary based on the different roles of the users logged into the QBank (super 
administrator, item entry operator, item entry reviewer, chief reviewer, faculty administrator, and the 
faculty dean). Functions for each role are clearly defined and each role will have a different level of 
security and access.   

 
Figure 5:  OUM QBank Login Screen 



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Figure 6:  OUM QBank Dashboard 

Online Examination implementation 
The Online Examination System is a unique sub-feature of QBank system, which needs to be 
highlighted. The features and framework described earlier are meant for ‘Offline’ delivery of an 
examination paper. This means that test papers generated from the system can be printed as hard-
copy examination papers to be administered at various learning centers. The online component of the 
examination papers generation system is an extension of the Qbank main system. It allows for the test 
paper generated to be displayed online for the purpose of conducting the test in the online 
environment. To facilitate an Exam Paper created for ‘Online Exam’ delivery purposes, the Qbank 
system needs to include another ‘Online subsystem’ for students to login to take their examination at 
pre-scheduled dates and times. Figure 7 shows screenshots of the online testing system. 

 
Figure 7:  OUM Online Testing System 

The Online Subsystem is designed to integrate with OUM’s campus student management system to 
perform the following two important functions: 

i) Authenticate Student access and confirm if there is a pre-scheduled examination. Once Student 
ID is authenticated and the system confirms that there is an examination scheduled then the 
designated Exam Paper will be made available to the student. 

ii) Send student’s exam results to the campus student management system once the student has 
completed the examination 



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Since the examination is taken online, both examination results and item analyses can be processed in 
real-time.  

Security Considerations 
Security concern is one of the major considerations throughout the design of the system infrastructure 
and architecture, to ensure that data in the system is protected from unauthorized access, resulting in 
theft, loss, misuse or modification, as well as from attackers, hackers and crackers. 

Various methods of user authentication were explored, including biometrics and facial recognition 
technologies. For cost effectiveness and efficiency, the familiar 2-factor authentication, the same as 
used by banks, is implemented for all users at all levels accessing the system, to protect their account 
with their password and personal mobile phone. Two-factor authentication can drastically reduce the 
probabilities of online identity theft, phishing expeditions, and other online fraud and, thus, provide 
security to the entire system. Figure 8 shows the dialog screen for entering the authentication code, 
which is sent to the user’s mobile phone.  

 
Figure 8 Enter Authentication Code Screen 

Limitations  
First, although the Qbank is capable of generating examination papers on demand to meet flexible 
examination times and locations, the system needs to have sufficient items deposited into the 
database. This is to avoid a high probability of repeated items.   

Second, despite the commendable security measures taken to authenticate the registered candidate, it 
is still a challenge to prove the rightful candidate is actually answering the questions if the 
examination is taken from locations not monitored by OUM, for example in the candidate’s home.  

Third but not least, the quality of items that are deposited into the item database is very much 
dependent on the subject matter expert producing quality items. The input into the Qbank will 
determine the output, in the form of the examination paper. The programmed item analysis indices 
are limited to multiple-choice-question format only. As such, the quality of open-ended questions is 
unlikely to be improvised and enhanced.  



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Conclusion 
There is no doubt that the QBank system facilitates the assessment processes. The system stores items, 
provides table of specification for selecting items from the database, generates examination papers, 
analyses multiple-choice questions items and is able to deliver examination paper for online testing. It 
was possible to develop these functionalities due to a well designed system that includes system 
requirement analysis, user-interface design, functionality design and user-acceptance testing. Though 
there were limitations the OUM QBank system has been successfully implemented. It is hoped that 
with the implementation of the QBank system, assessment can be conducted not only in a more 
efficient and effective manner, but also in a more flexible way, paving the way towards the flexible 
entry and exit of learners. 

References 
Choppin, B. (1976, June). Developments in item banking. Paper presented at the First European Contact Workshop, 

Windsor, UK. 
Estes, G. D. (Ed.). (1985). Examples of item banks to support local test development: Two case studies with reactions. 

Washington, DC: National Institute of Education. 
Jandaghi, G., & Shaterian, F. ( 2008). Validity, reliability and difficulty indices for instructor-built exam 

questions. Journal of Applied Quantitative Methods, 3(2), 151-155. Retrieved from http:// 
files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ803060.pdf 

Latchem, C., Özkul, A.E., Aydin, C.H., & Mutlu, M.E. (2006). The Open Education System, Anadolu University, 
Turkey: E-transformation in a mega-university. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 
21, 221-235. 

Mutlu, M. E., Erorta, Ö. Ö., & Yılmaz, Ü. (2004, October). Efficiency of e-learning in open education. In First 
International Conference on “Innovations in Learning for the Future: e-Learning”, 26-27, October 2004, Istanbul. 

Okonkwo, C. A. (2010). Sustainable assessment and evaluation strategies for open and distance learning. Turkish 
Online Journal of Distance education - TOJDE, 11(4), 121-129. 

Authors 

Dr. Safiah Md Yusof is an Associate Professor and currently the  Deputy Director for the Institute for Teaching 
and Learning Advancement (ITLA) at Open University Malaysia. She is also Head of the Online Learning 
Support Unit at ITLA, OUM. Email: safiah_mdyusof@oum.edu.my 

Tick Meng Lim is a Professor and currently the Director for the Institute for Teaching and Learning 
Advancement (ITLA) at OUM. Email: limtm@oum.edu.my 

Leo Png is currently the CEO of IMPAC Media Pte Ltd based in Singapore. Email: leo@impacmedia.sg 

Dr. Zainuriyah Abd Khatab is currently a lecturer at OUM and Head of Assessment Support Unit for the 
Institute for Teaching and Learning Advancement at OUM. Email: zainuriyah@oum.edu.my 

Dr. Harvinder Kaur Dharam Singh is currently a lecturer at OUM and the Head of Face-To-Face Support Unit 
for the Institute for Teaching and Learning Advancement at OUM. Email: harvinder@oum.edu.my