Students’ academic performance is based on continuous evaluation of coursework as well as that of final written examination. For most courses, final examination constitutes about 40% of the evaluation. (Some courses are 100% lab-based, and as such, coursework contributes to the entire course performance.) Typically, coursework comprises assignments, lab reports, tests, quizes, and vivas. In many of the courses, the test portion of the course work makes up about 10% of the total evaluation of the course, and hence the summation of final examination and tests constitutes about 50% of the evaluation. This means that even though the delivery of the curriculum is very heavily slanted towards lab-based work, examinations still play a major role in determining the student’s academic status.

Final examinations are written ones, and are given at the end of the semester. They are centrally administered so as to ensure the integrity of the process. Students must first of all fulfill certain requirements, such as attendance and attainment of high quality in submitted assignments, prior to being allowed to sit for final examinations. The durations for final examinations are 1-2 hours for 2-unit courses, and 2-3 hours for courses which carry 3 units or more.

In UNIMAP, examination questions are considered to be the most important instruments to test the level of students’ mastery over the subject matter. It is also an indicator on the effectiveness of the lecturer in imparting knowledge to students. Hence, the process of preparing for the examination script is taken very seriously, and is monitored at school and university levels. All questions are vetted formally. For every set of exam script, there are normally 6 big questions, which contain therein several sub-questions. Usually, students answer 5 of the 6 questions. A good examination script, in accordance to levels of knowledge acquisition as outlined in Bloom’s taxonomy, consists of approximately 10% questions which are of ‘knowledge’ nature (‘what’), 20% of ‘understanding’ nature (‘explain’, ‘describe’), and 70% of ‘application’, which combines ‘analysis’, ‘synthesis’, and ‘evaluation’ nature (‘calculate’, ‘use’, ‘solve’, ‘compare’, ‘differentiate’, ‘classify’, ‘combine’, ‘integrate’, ‘conclude’, ‘comment on’, ‘prove’, and ‘evaluate’).