Accessible version | Skip to content | Change your text size

Table of contents
Previous pageNext page

Sample exam question

"Discuss the characteristics of a search engine (e.g. Google) front-end with regard to human-computer interface (HCI) issues."

Click on the highlighted text to see the comments.

This is a question from a first-year exam in Information Management. It was worth 20% of the overall assessment on a 2-hour exam.

Students would be expected to write on this topic for about 25 minutes. But clearly the content of what is written is more important than the number of words or the number of pages. Good answers were usually between 1 and 2 pages, simply because there were a number of points that needed to be explained.

The question has two aspects -

  1. the characteristics of a search engine front-end
  2. human-computer interface issues

To get a good grade for this question, it was most important to interpret the key direction words: discuss and with regard to.

Discuss

Examine, analyse carefully, and give reasons for and against. Be complete and give details.

With regard to

In this context, this means you are being asked to do more than merely acknowledge that there are interfaces to search engines - you are asked to relate the interface to the functions of the search engine.

The discussion would therefore examine and analyse the relationship between general HCI principles and the specific application of them to a search engine front-end in a web environment.

word outputDownload a printable version of this page (.doc)
Problems? Questions? Comments? Please provide us feedback.