On the Effect of the Ordering of Questions in Exams

The e ect of the ordering of questions in sample surveys has been well investigated. However, there has been no study so far that examined the e ect of the ordering of exam questions on the exam behavior of students. In this paper, we will discuss the e ect of the ordering of questions on the student behavior for an introductory long{distance statistics course. Because we were working with the electronic textbook CyberStats that records exact submission times of student answers to exam questions, the following research question could be answered: Do students usually answer exam questions in sequential order (independent from the exam questions) or do they tend to jump from one exam question to another while leaving some types of (apparentely more di cult) exam questions until the very end? As it turned out, many students answer exam questions in almost perfect sequential order. This may easily lead to the result that those students will miss simple exam questions towards the end of an exam when there is a tight time limit for the students.