COMPARISON OF WRITTEN ASSESSMENT TOOLS OF BUSINESS MATHEMATICS IN THE FACULTY OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION BASED ON BLOOM’S TAXONOMY

The teaching learning is a continuous process by which the educators involving in this field are working to change the behavior of the students as the required human resources for the welfare of the society. Bloom’s Taxonomy is the most important and widely used process that helps the educators to provide the students equipped with knowledge perfectly in the different domains of the learning skills as suggested by Benjamin Bloom. To assess the learning skills written test is the very important tools that are applying on the students from the beginning of the formal education. In this paper an attempt has been taken to evaluate the allocation pattern of the marks of the course Business Mathematics of the three departments Accounting and Information System, Management and Finance & Banking under business faculty according to the components of Bloom’s Taxonomy. It is observed that there is a significant difference of the allocations of marks among the selected the three departments regarding the cognitive domain of the B.T. But no significant difference has been found in the allocation pattern of marks throughout the academic years under review. The marks allocation in LOCQ, IOCQ and HOCQ are found to be 43 percent 52 percent and 5 percent respectively which are not suited with the recommended marks allocation according to the recognized system. The suggestions and recommendation have been given to allocate the marks to prepare the written questions papers according to the cognitive domains of Bloom’s Taxonomy


Introduction
Educators involving in teaching learning operations have been being assessed the progress of the learners in different procedures from the beginning of formal education. Throughout the period of a certain academic program it is required to assess, to evaluate, to measure the learning progress, acquisition of skills, documentations of academic readiness and fitness of each of the learner to have a clear idea of acquired knowledge about the specific courses allotted. The set of procedures that helps to make clear idea about the academic achievement consists of different types of test, assessment, examination, evaluation, measurement is used frequently on the students changed behavior. Written examination is the most important tools to measure the changed behavior of the students with quantified scores by which the evaluations of achievement are to be done clearly for the individual depth of knowledge. The depth of the knowledge of a student in a course is evaluated through using various types of procedures among which application of written test examination is a very important technique where questions paper is only the element to assess the students in quantitative manner of the acquired knowledge. How well the depth of the knowledge of a student is achieved depends on the students' performance in answer script of examination based on the questions paper quantifies in scores weight in a specific subject.
Since the question is the main parameter to measure the depth of the knowledge of a student, it is required to examine how well and standardly the questions paper has been prepared for a specific course to achieve educational goal and development. To attain at the target of the educational objectives and continuous advancement of education, the Bloom's Taxonomy has yet been used widely by the educators involving in teaching learning activities since it is created by Benjamin Bloom in the year 1956 (Anderson, 2005). According to the Bloom's Taxonomy there are three Domains for learning namely cognitive domains, affective domain and psychomotor domain. Among which cognitive domain is completely on the basis of mental skills that are conventionally measured by the question papers used in the written examination. Under cognitive domain there are six parameters suggested as Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating and creating to have a standard questions paper to evaluate the student's mental skills in a specific subject with scores. In the Faculty of Business Administration of Islamic University, Kushtia, total marks allotted to a course with seven sets of different questions each of which containing 14with a grand total of 98 marks is allotted to consider the students with written examination by questions paper. Furthermore, 30 marks are allotted to evaluate the students known as internal evaluation completely based on the Creating parameter and some limitation to collect the scores in this concern is not considered to include in the analysis.

Statement of the Problems
Bloom's Taxonomy has proved its superiority and effectiveness over other methods after it was verified widely and successfully in the assessment of students learning performance of different domains of learning skills. A written test examination is conventional process to evaluate the achievement of the learning skills of knowledge for a certain program by the values of individual scores achieved. The questions paper is the main instrument of assessing the skills of knowledge of the students. The assessed scores do not indicate the uniform learning skills of the students because of the unstandardized test setting. It is proved that following the components of Bloom's Taxonomy, the prepared questions paper will be the standard in evaluating the skills of knowledge of the students uniformly. In this regards the researchers have tried to explore variation of written test examinations to examine the question paper of Business Mathematics taking the study period (2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016) of three departments at Business Faculty under the Islamic University, Kushtia, Bangladesh.

Objective of the Study
To assess the written tests of the three departments of business faculty of the Islamic University, Kushtia, Bangladesh an attempt has been taken to complete the following specific objectives of the study: 1) To overview the concepts of Bloom's Taxonomy.
2) To make a comparison of tests of Business Mathematics on the basis of the components cognitive domain of Bloom's Taxonomy for the selected sample departments during the study period. 3) To identify the variations of the selected tests of the sample departments during the study period 4) To recommend suggestions for the improvement of the tests.

Hypothesis of the Study
The following hypotheses have been tested in the study: H0: There is no significant difference regarding each of the parameters of cognitive domain of Bloom's Taxonomy compare to the three departments as well as selected academic year under review.

Review of Related Literature
Nayef et al. (2013) Focus on an essential study entitle "Taxonomies of Educational Objective Domain." The author's studies in this paper taxonomy are used as a tool of educational objectives analysis, so that the studies have been done on Bloom's Taxonomy, Loran Andersons Taxonomy and Wilsons Taxonomy. After this study the writers make a comparison among these three taxonomies then the authors finding that the Bloom's Taxonomy is more suitable as a tool of analyzing educational objective domains. Nancy (2015) expressed an idea entitled "Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive learning objectives." They mainly focused on how the cognitive domain of blooms taxonomy used for evaluating of learning objective and the authors viewed that those who are teach, instruct and train other in information professionals, They can use Bloom's taxonomy to write learning objectives that describe the skills and abilities that they desire from their learners to master and express.
Heather et al. (2014) highlight in the study "Improving Outcomes with Bloom's Taxonomy: From Statistics Education to Research Partnerships." The authors mainly focused on this paper improving learning outcome with the help of Bloom's Taxonomy in many statistics courses so that it could be contribute to the research partnerships or in research. To achieve this objective the researchers inquired that in recent year many statistical courses have been updated or restructured to emphasis on concept and application so that students would be improve to prepared consumers and producers of statistical information and at the same time authors shift their attention on the gap which are still existing between students and instructor expectation, its means that the students what are able to actually to do after completing the courses. been under with the topic "Comparison of Written Assessment Tools of Business Mathematics in the Faculty of Business Administration Based on Bloom's Taxonomy". This study will be helpful for the policy makers and researchers of education sector.

Concept of the Related Terms Assessment
Assessment is what we do in order to identify strengths and weaknesses within a program. This is conducted by using student assignments to tell us if we are upholding our promise to develop the knowledge and skills we promised the students the program would deliver (California State University, 2016).
In education, the term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students (The glossary of education reform, 2015).
Assessment involves the use of empirical data on student learning to refine programs and improve student teaching (Allen, 2004). Assessment is the process of gathering and discussing information from multiple and diverse sources in order to develop a deep understanding of what students know, understand, and can do with their knowledge as a result of their educational experiences; the process culminates when assessment results are used to improve subsequent learning (Huba & Freed, 2000).
Assessment is the systematic basis for making inferences about the learning and development of students. It is the process of defining, selecting, designing, collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and using information to increase students' learning and development (Erwin.T.D, 1991).  This study is based on secondary data which are obtained from allotted marks in each of the parameters of cognitive domain of Bloom's Taxonomy for each set of questions paper. Moreover, the journals, articles, reports and surveys have been discussed for the better understanding to conduct the study.  Source: Compiled the average scores from the written tests questions paperof the sample departments.

Analysis and Interpretation
The Table 1 shows the allocations of scores in various aspects under the different components of the cognitive domains of Blooms Taxonomy for the selected department during the period of the study. The allocated scores vary from minimum to maximum by (9-21), (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20) and (   This table shows the measures of the allotments of marks of the selected courses combined of three departments during the study period based on cognitive domain of Blooms Taxonomy. Written questions are required to classify three types of orders as LOCQ (Lower order cognitive questions), IOCQ (Intermediate order cognitive questions) and HOCQ (Higher order cognitive questions) with a specified percentage of marks in each order. It is noted that the average percentage of allocations of marks are 43 percent, 52 percent and 5 percent for LOCQ, IOCQ and HOCQ respectively which is not suited with the recommended percentage ranges (20-30), (40-50) and (30-40) in that order.   On the other hand the calculated value of F is greater than critical value of F in all cases source of variations except the factor remembering of the three departments and thus we reject the null hypothesis.

Conclusion
It is clear from the analysis and interpretation that the written question papers those are applied to assess the learning skills of the students of the business faculty are not prepared by following the cognitive domains properly of Bloom's Taxonomy during the review period. It is found that no change have been made throughout the selected academic year to allocate marks by each of the selected department but a significant different has been found among the department thus the authority should take necessary steps to follow principles of Bloom's Taxonomy for the preparation of the written test questions papers.

Suggestions and Recommendations
On the basis of analyses, interpretations and observations, the following suggestions and recommendations are provided to prepare a better written test questions paper to assess the skills of the students in acquired knowledge of the cognitive domain uniformly: 1) To have a clear idea of Bloom's Taxonomy for the faculty teachers, the authority should take necessary actions.
2) The applications of the principles of Bloom's Taxonomy should cover the learning outcomes of the courses of business mathematics. 3) The teachers should follow the codes of Bloom's Taxonomy both in the classroom teaching learning and in preparing the written questions papers of business mathematics. 4) It should be maintained the ratio of higher order thinking questions and lower order thinking questions and preference should be given to select the more in higher order thinking in the course of business mathematics. 5) Peer questions setters should be nominated based on skilled and experienced regarding the specific courses oriented. 6) The moderation activities to select the final questions papers must be done by the group of teachers of combinations of knowledge in each of the courses.