Multiple-column format for reducing task complexity of recognizing handwritten answer in multiple-choice question (MCQ) test

Multiple-choice question (MCQ) test is a very common and popular test instrument among educators utilized for assessing student performance, particularly in large size classes, in an objective manner. Despite its popularity and the advantages it offers, any automated test grading application designed for handling MCQ test is challenged with scoring time efficiency and accuracy issues. Between both, achieving higher accuracy is still of greater interest as reflected in many research works. Furthermore, recognizing student's answers appear in handwritten form is not an easy task to accomplish. When a single column answer sheet is used, then any attempt to recognize student's answer written outside the determined area will obviously create an additional cost to the application. Not only it will affect the time required for locating and processing the corrected answer, but the non-standard handwritten answer may decline the accuracy level also. A three-column answer sheet is proposed then as a solution to accommodating students' need for putting their corrected answer. The computational cost of recognizing at most three consecutive answers in the designated area is shown to follow a linear growth. Therefore, it can be concluded that the three-column answer sheet offers advantages to time efficiency and indirectly, recognition accuracy issues.