Examining Engineering Students in Developing Countries: the case for three-part questions

This paper presents a method for assessing the three major objectives in the teaching of vocational and technical courses. These objectives are identified as material assimilation, application to real practical problems and resourcefulness of the student. The method was developed and tested over a period of more than 10 years on the Applied Electricity course, taught to first year engineering students at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. Analysis show that with the three-part-question method of examination the distribution of student scores is normal and the information deduced can be useful to both lecturer and student.