Creating a High Voltage Cable-Jointing Knowledge check using the CARE Generation Methodology

This paper presents the latest application of a new process for creating Multiple Alternative Choice (MAC) test items. The method is named Construed Antonym Realization Exercise (CARE) generation. The first step is to pre-process the source documents in the context of a series of Controlled Specific Learning Objectives (CSLOs). Statistical NLP is then used to identify significant content and complementary and antonymic syntactic patterns. A system of construal operations is then used to produce test items which allow identification of 'correct'/’incorrect’ construal of these word pairs in relation to the CSLOs. A MAC template is then used to generate test items. The process is tested using a domain specific evaluation method. The results provide sufficiently positive evidence to support future experiments.