How to Construct Open Ended Questions

All institutions offering engineering programs are faced with significant challenges, especially in preparing students so that they can receive information, learn the technology, the principles and practice of engineering as well as adapting to the rapidly changing needs to compete globally. Criteria and targets set by the Engineering Accreditation Council (EAC) and the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) stipulate that these students must be able to process the information actively and critically, evaluate them in order to achieve the high level of professional skills. Apart from the use of teaching and learning strategies, assessment methods, such as open-ended questions from the higher level of Bloom's taxonomy can be used to develop the necessary professional skills. This study aims to examine and provide examples, the form and level of open-ended questions in the field of electrical engineering that can test the mind, and encourage students to think analytically, critically and outside the box. This paper discusses the analysis performed on four questions from the final exam in the second semester 2010/2011 session to measure qualitatively the open-ended questions posed by the lecturer and whether they complied with the features as described. Out of those four questions, one completely complied with the set feature, two out of four parts in another question complied while one question has not complied at all. Some suggestions are given to improve the level of a given question.