schema-based measurement of achievement at tertiary education

Measuring achievement plays a very important role at all educational levels, especially at tertiary education. various methods have been used in developing achievement tests, among which two have met the criteria required for their fairness: traditional multiple choice item tests (mcits) and schema based close mcits. while the selection of choices in the former depends on the test writer s intuition, the latter employ alternatives having semantic and syntactic relationships with keyed response. in this study a traditional mcit developed by testing specialists and a schema- based cloze mcit developed by the present researcher were administrated to 74 undergraduate university students to find out which one has higher statistical values. the validity, reliability, and practicality of the tests were also compared. the results showed that the schema- based cloze mcit correlated significantly with the traditional mcits. the obtained high and significant correlation coefficient (r= 0.81) indicate that the schema-based close mcits can replace their traditional counterpart. the results also showed that the schema-based cloze mcits have superior validity and reliability over traditional mcits. english instructors at higher education institutions and center can, therefore, employ the findings of the present study to develop their own valid, reliable and feasible schema-based cloze mcits.