Medical students' perception of online assessment at a private medical college

Introduction: During COVID-19 lockdown, Shalamar Medical College opted for an unproctored online formative assessment. Medical institutes have conducted online assessments before COVID-19 and literature presents contrasting views on its acceptability by teachers and students alike. Objective:  This study aims to determine medical students’ perception of the unproctored online assessments. Methods:  A survey questionnaire was disseminated through Google forms to all MBBS students of SMDC on WhatsApp. Consent to take part in the survey was added to the questionnaire and students consenting to be a part of the survey were requested to fill in the questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of closed ended as well as open-ended questions. The data was analyzed by IBM SPSS 20. Results:  Network issues are believed to be a major issue in taking online tests (83%) and 45% of the students feel it is more difficult to take an online test. Fifty-eight percent of the students feel it is easy to cheat on online tests. A considerable number of students (P = 0.00) believe that MCQS are more reliable than SEQs. Conclusion:  The results of this study showed that students do not consider online tests as reliable and effective as classroom tests because of network issues, and unconducive environment at home, limited time, and academic dishonesty. However, if they are unavoidable, students would be more receptive to MCQs than SEQs. KEYWORDS: Reliability, cheating, effectiveness, online assessment  

Antecedents of Product Country Image Pci and its Impact on Consumers Willingness to Buy Foreign Products

This thesis comprises three separate yet interrelated research articles on product country image (PCI). Two theories from social science have provided underpinnings for the conceptual model of relationships investigated in this thesis: self-categorization theory provides a basis for consumers to categorize products as domestic or foreign, whereas social identity theory helps explain consumers‘ ethnocentrism. These theories have implications for the applicability of integrated marketing strategies to consumers located in nations with different cultures. Four antecedents of PCI were selected from the literature, namely, materialism (MAT), consumer ethnocentrism (CE), value consciousness (VC), and cosmopolitanism (COS), and their relationships with consumers‘ perceptions about home product country image (HPCI) and foreign product country image (FPCI) were investigated using a sample of young Pakistani respondents for the product category of clothing. This was examined in the first research article. The second research article tested the presence of the moderating effect of country familiarity (CF) on the relationships of the above-stated 4 antecedents with FPCI. The third research paper then investigated the relationship between PCI (including both HPCI and FPCI) with consumers‘ willingness to buy (WB) in the presence of the iv moderating effect of their product experience (PE) from previously using foreign products. Data were collected through a questionnaire completed by university students in Lahore. Validated scales were used to measure the latent constructs mentioned above, and confirmatory factor analysis was done to verify that the indicators do load on their respective factors with the required loading strength. Thereafter, structural relationships between the above-stated latent constructs were tested using structural equation modeling. In the first article, consumers‘ COS was found to be positively related to not only HPCI but also FPCI, which is not unusual, as cosmopolitan consumers are likely to be more open minded about both home and foreign products. CE was found to be positively related to FPCI, which was unexpected considering findings reported in the literature. Consumers‘ MAT was found to be positively related to FPCI, which was intuitively commensurate with expectations and in line with the literature. Consumers‘ VC was found to be negatively related to FPCI but positively related to HPCI, which is understandable in a developing country with low purchasing power. The results of the second research article revealed that CF has a moderating effect only on the relationship between consumers‘ VC and FPCI and does not moderate the relationship between the other 3 antecedents and FPCI.The results of the third paper showed that FPCI is positively related to consumers‘ WB foreign products. Further, consumers‘ PE with foreign products was found to moderate the relationship between FPCI and WB.