WHEREAS the Board of Dentistry is empowered by Sec. 9, Art. III of R.A. No. 4419; "The Philippine Dental Act of 1965" and Sec. 6, (a) of P.D. No. 223, as amended, to adopt measures or policies that will preserve and improve the technical, ethical, and moral standards of the profession of dentistry.

WHEREAS the full computerization of the Dental Licensure Examination is a policy that has three (3) beneficial effects to the effective supervision, regulation, and control of the licensure and practice of the profession: (1) it will bring about the confidentiality, integrity, credibility, and quality of the examination which the Board and the Commission are sworn to uphold and preserve so as to win the public trust and faith therein; (2) it will ensure the immediate releases of the examinations, henceforth, paving the way for the successful examinees to work or practice at once; and (3) it will accord the Board more time for the supervision, regulation, and control of the practice of the profession;

WHEREAS under Res. No. 265, Series of 1993, the Commission directed that the examination of all the professions under the jurisdiction and supervision thereof "shall be fully computerized in 1993 except those professions with examinees below 100 which shall be programmed in 1994; and

WHEREAS the process of full computerization of the licensure examination does not only involve the correction and rating of testpapers, but it does also utilizes test bank from which questions are extracted and randomly arranged by and through the computer.

NOW, THEREFORE, by virtue of the quasi-legislative power thereof under Sec. 10, Art. III of R.A. No. 4419 the Board hereby RESOLVES, as it is so resolved, to fully computerize the Dental Licensure Examination starting with the December 17, 18, and 19, 1993 schedule under these guidelines and procedures, viz.:

1.         The Board Member shall input into the test bank at least five hundred (500) questions for each subject as the starting point which must be built up by a minimum of three hundred (300) every examination to reach the ideal optimum of three thousand (3000) questions or more.  The questions deposited in the testbank shall be withdrawable and replenishable with new ones so as to keep abreast with the latest scientific trend of the profession.

2.         The inputted questions may come from those which the Board Member had personally prescribed or formulated or from those which he/she had adopted from the questions supplied by the academe.

3.         No question shall be fed into the testbank unless it has been appraised as to its objectivity, validity, materiality, reliability, and efficaciousness.  An expert on test construction may be consulted to assist the Board Member fine-tune every question to discern if the foregoing constraints or parameters have been met, to determine if every question is unambiguous, and to find out if it is definite and only answerable with one definite correct answer - and not with the best answer.

4.         The questions to be fed into the testbank shall be classified as to their degree of comprehensibility: easy, average/moderate, and difficult; as to their level of knowledge (sound, adequate, and fair) and as to their nature: essay and objective: multiple choice.

5.         Security measures shall be implemented to ensure that the computer programs and files are tamper-free. Multiple passwords shall be adopted so that no one has complete control of, or access to, the computer programs and files.  Three (3) responsible key official shall be designated for this purpose.

6.         The number of questions to be given in the examination for each subject shall be extracted from the testbank and randomized so as to produce at least two (2) sets, e.g. "A" and "B" containing the same number of questions but having different chronological arrangements of questions for printing and distribution to the examinees, accordingly precluding the examinees from copying the answers of their seatmates.

7.         The correction and rating of testpapers as well as the other stages/processes involved in the release of the results of the examination shall be computerized.

FURTHER, RESOLVED that the herein resolution, upon its approval by the Commission, shall be effective after fifteen (15) days following its publication in the Official Gazette or newspapers of general circulation.

FINALLY, RESOLVED that this resolution shall be circularized to the schools/colleges of dentistry for the guidance and information of all concerned.

Adopted: 3 Nov. 1993

(Sgd.) ATHENA B. ALCAZAREN, DMD Chairman
(Sgd.) LUIS F. OROSA, DMD Member	(Sgd.) AURELIO B. RAMOS, JR., DMD Member
(Sgd.) FELIPE E. GONZALES, DMD  Member	(Sgd.) FEDERICO S. VILLA, DMD Member
APPROVED:
(Sgd.) HERMOGENES P. POBRE Commission Chairman
(Sgd.) MARIANO A. MENDIETA Commission Member	(Sgd.) ARMANDO C. PASCUAL Commission Member