Abstract—This paper investigates the effects of online exams
on students' achievements and the students' perceptions of
online and paper exams after taking an experimental online and
paper based exams. Carefully designed exams that included
various types of questions were attempted by male students in
the faculty of computers and information technology and female
students in the faculty of Education and Arts. The Moodle Quiz
tool was used to design and conduct the online exams. The
results of the online exams were compared with similar designed
paper based exams. The students' performances in exams were
measured in each question type (MCQ, TF, short, essay,
numerical, and descriptive). Surprisingly, the mean and
standard deviation statistical results were found to be similar
between both paper based and online exams in the MCQ, TF,
and numerical type of questions; while the essay questions
results indicated that the students preferred to answer on paper
rather than type on the computer screen. In the followed survey
about their experiences with both exams, the students indicated
to prefer certain aspects of online exams such as automatic
results and feedback.
Index Terms—Paper exams, online exams, experimental
exams, Moodle quiz, question types.
Majdi Al-Qdah and Islam Ababneh are with University of Tabuk, Tabuk,
KSA (e-mail: mqdah@ut.edu.sa, iababneha@ut.edu.sa).
Cite: Majdi Al-Qdah and Islam Ababneh, "Comparing Online and Paper Exams: Performances and Perceptions of Saudi Students," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 106-109, 2017.