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The article reports on the development and use of behavioral objectives for improving the field experiences in student teaching presented by the Directors of Student Teaching at the State of Illinois Colleges and Universities, both private and public institutions. A form of position paper regarding this importance issue was made to present the opinions of the directors. The behavioral objective is to examine narrowly the work of the beginning teacher and focus attention on defined skills and behaviors to be achieved. The development and use of behavioral objectives are one approach on the problem of making pertinent efforts on improving the teaching education.

Background: To see if there is a difference in performance when students switch from traditional paper-and-pencil examinations to computer-based examinations, and to determine whether there are gender differences in student performance in these two examination formats., Methods: This study involved first year medical students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign over three Academic Years 2002-03/2003-04 and 2003-05. Comparisons of student performance by overall class and gender were made. Specific comparisons within courses that utilized both the paper-and-pencil and computer formats were analyzed., Results: Overall performance scores for students among the various Academic Years revealed no differences between exams given in the traditional pen-and-paper and computer formats. Further, when we looked specifically for gender differences in performance between these two testing formats, we found none., Conclusion: The format for examinations in the courses analyzed does not affect student performance. We find no evidence for gender differences in performance on exams on pen-and-paper or computer-based exams.