Trendy Gist has reliably gathered
that the West African Examination Council (WAEC), has ruled out the adoption of
CBT for its examinations. This was revealed by the Head, National Office, Mr
Charles Eguridu, at an interactive forum with the Education Correspondents yesterday
night in Abuja, the nation’s capital....
WAEC says it is not considering
adopting a Computer-Based Test (CBT) mode for its examinations; because, it
would amount to “intellectual dishonesty’’ for the council to introduce CBT in
the next five years or the near future.
Charles stated that the purpose
of education is to prepare people for life, not to pass examinations; hence the
need to examine different domains which CBT cannot accommodate.
In his words:....
“There is what we call the
cognitive domain; that is what you have learnt that you can put in your head. There
is also what we call affective domain that has to do with your emotions. There
is also what we call the psychomotor domain that is skills which you can
express using your hands and your body”.
He continued:
“I am yet to see any education
expert who will tell you that you can measure the psychomotor domain using CBT.
Any test that will use computer to evaluate who will be a good carpenter cannot
be a valid test.’’
He said the examinations
conducted by the council took into cognizance the three domains that measured
ability to recall, apply and practicalise.
Eguridu said that in psychomotor
domain, candidates did practical tests in agricultural science in the farm and
the examiner supervised their actual agricultural practice.
He said that those doing woodwork
were made to carry out physical designs of whatever woodwork assignment they
were going to do and evaluated on the outcome of their work.
The WAEC official said that even
Netherlands where people went to learn CBT had yet to apply CBT in all its
examinations.
He said, “In Netherlands which
people emulate in CBT, they have not been able to migrate 40 per cent.
“How many schools in Nigeria have
hardware? How many schools in Nigeria have the facilities to have those
computers?
“There is the additional problem
of electricity and internet connectivity.
“What JAMB is doing is
commendable because theirs is an admission test; it is a certification
examination.’’
Eguridu said that WAEC was using
specialised gadgets in detecting examination malpractice as the device had
ability to transmit any irregularity to its data base in Lagos.
He said that the council had
started encrypting the data of candidates in their results to avoid
falsification.
According to him, WAEC has not
had any issue of examination leakages in the past five years.
The WAEC chief also said that the
council had reversed itself on withholding of results of candidates in those
states that owed it following appeals from the stakeholders.
He said that the council was
still favourably disposed to granting such credit facilities to states being a
service rendering organisation.
Eguridu urged the affected states
to pay up their debts in order to keep the council running.
-NAN
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