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Constructing Tests - Teaching@UW

The document provides guidance on constructing effective tests to assess student learning. It discusses the importance of aligning test design with course goals and methods of instruction. General tips include considering the reasons for testing, maintaining consistency between goals and assessment, and helping students prepare. The document also provides specific guidance on designing multiple choice, essay, and short answer test questions and grading student responses. It emphasizes the importance of assessing your own test to evaluate question clarity, difficulty level, and whether it effectively measures the intended learning outcomes.

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NUR AFIFAH BINTI JAMALUDIN STUDENT
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64 views3 pages

Constructing Tests - Teaching@UW

The document provides guidance on constructing effective tests to assess student learning. It discusses the importance of aligning test design with course goals and methods of instruction. General tips include considering the reasons for testing, maintaining consistency between goals and assessment, and helping students prepare. The document also provides specific guidance on designing multiple choice, essay, and short answer test questions and grading student responses. It emphasizes the importance of assessing your own test to evaluate question clarity, difficulty level, and whether it effectively measures the intended learning outcomes.

Uploaded by

NUR AFIFAH BINTI JAMALUDIN STUDENT
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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TEACHING@UW

/ Course design / Constructing tests

Constructing tests Course design


Designing tests is an important part of assessing students Getting started on your
understanding of course content and their level of competency in course
applying what they are learning. Whether you use low-stakes and
frequent evaluations — quizzes — or high-stakes and infrequent Creating your syllabus
evaluations — midterms and finals — careful design will help
Flipping the classroom
provide more calibrated results.
Teaching large enrollment
courses
A few general guidelines to help you get
started Designing and refining
hybrid and online courses
Consider your reasons for testing.
Integrating technology into
Will this quiz monitor the students’ progress so that you can your teaching
adjust the pace of the course?
Creating a culture of
Will ongoing quizzes serve to motivate students?
academic integrity
Will this final provide data for a grade at the end of the quarter?
Will this mid-term challenge students to apply concepts learned Developing community
so far? agreements

The reason(s) for giving a test will help you determine features such ChatGPT and other AI-
as length, format, level of detail required in answers, and the time based tools
frame for returning results to the students. Teaching the first day of
class
Maintain consistency between goals for the course, methods of
teaching, and the tests used to measure achievement of goals. If, Assessing student learning
for example, class time emphasizes review and recall of
information, then so can the test; if class time emphasizes Rubrics
analysis and synthesis, then the test can also be designed to
Grading
demonstrate how well students have learned these things.
Use testing methods that are appropriate to learning goals. Constructing tests
For example, a multiple choice test might be useful for
demonstrating memory and recall, for example, but it may Critiquing student projects
require an essay or open-ended problem-solving for students to
demonstrate more independent analysis or synthesis.
Help Students prepare. Most students will assume that the test
is designed to measure what is most important for them to learn
in the course. You can help students prepare for the test by
clarifying course goals as well as reviewing material. This will
allow the test to reinforce what you most want students to learn
and retain.
Use consistent language (in stating goals, in talking in class, and
in writing test questions) to describe expected outcomes. If you
want to use words like explain or discuss, be sure that you use
them consistently and that students know what you mean when
you use them.
Design test items that allow students to show a range of
learning. That is, students who have not fully mastered
everything in the course should still be able to demonstrate how
much they have learned.

Multiple choice exams


Multiple choice questions can be difficult to write, especially if you
want students to go beyond recall of information, but the exams are
easier to grade than essay or short-answer exams. On the other
hand, multiple choice exams provide less opportunity than essay or
short-answer exams for you to determine how well the students can
think about the course content or use the language of the discipline
in responding to questions.

If you decide you want to test mostly recall of information or facts


and you need to do so in the most efficient way, then you should
consider using multiple choice tests.

The following ideas may be helpful as you begin to plan for a


multiple choice exam:

Since questions can result in misleading wording and


misinterpretation, try to have a colleague answer your test
questions before the students do.
Be sure that the question is clear within the stem so that
students do not have to read the various options to know what
the question is asking.
Avoid writing items that lead students to choose the right answer
for the wrong reasons. For instance, avoid making the correct
alternative the longest or most qualified one, or the only one that
is grammatically appropriate to the stem.
Try to design items that tap students’ overall understanding of
the subject. Although you may want to include some items that
only require recognition, avoid the temptation to write items that
are difficult because they are taken from obscure passages
(footnotes, for instance).
Consider a formal assessment of your multiple-choice questions
with what is known as an “item analysis” of the test. For example:
Which questions proved to be the most difficult?
Were there questions which most of the students with high
grades missed?

This information can help you identify areas in which students need
further work, and can also help you assess the test itself: Were the
questions worded clearly? Was the level of difficulty appropriate? If
scores are uniformly high, for example, you may be doing
everything right, or have an unusually good class. On the other
hand, your test may not have measured what you intended it to.
Essay questions
“Essay tests let students display their overall understanding of a
topic and demonstrate their ability to think critically, organize their
thoughts, and be creative and original. While essay and short-
answer questions are easier to design than multiple-choice tests,
they are more difficult and time-consuming to score. Moreover,
essay tests can suffer from unreliable grading; that is, grades on the
same response may vary from reader to reader or from time to time
by the same reader. For this reason, some faculty prefer short-
answer items to essay tests. On the other hand, essay tests are the
best measure of students’ skills in higher-order thinking and written
expression.”

(Barbara Gross Davis, Tools for Teaching, 1993, 272)

When are essay exams appropriate?


When you are measuring students’ ability to analyze, synthesize,
or evaluate
When you have been teaching at these levels (i.e. writing
intensive courses, upper-division undergraduate seminars,
graduate courses) or the content lends it self to more critical
analysis as opposed to recalling information

How do you design essay exams?


Be specific
Use words and phrases that alert students to the kind of thinking
you expect; for example, identify, compare, or critique
Indicate with points (or time limits) the approximate amount of
time students should spend on each question and the level of
detail expected in their responses
Be aware of time; practice taking the exam yourself or ask a
colleague to look at the questions

How do you grade essay exams?


Develop criteria for appropriate responses to each essay
question
Develop a scoring guide that tell what you are looking for in each
response and how much credit you intend to give for each part of
the response
Read all of the responses to question 1, then all of the responses
to question 2, and on through the exam. This will provide a more
holistic view of how the class answered the individual questions

How do you help students succeed on essay exams?


Use study questions that ask for the same kind of thinking you
expect on exams
During lecture or discussion emphasize examples of thinking that
would be appropriate on essay exams
Provide practice exams or sample test questions
Show examples of successful exam answers

Assessing your test


Regardless of the kind of exams you use, you can assess their
effectiveness by asking yourself some basic questions:

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