Types of test items and principles for constructing test items.
Constructing an Effective Essay Question. Following are a few tips to help in the construction of effective essay questions: Begin with the lesson objectives in mind. Make sure to know what you wish the student to show by answering the essay question. Decide if your goal requires a restricted or extended response.
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).
After writing preliminary test items, researchers use item analysis to assess the quality of individual items and of the test as a whole. To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Write a model answer. Before using a question, write model answer(s) or at least an outline of major points that should be included in an answer. Writing the model answer allows reflection on the clarity of the essay question. Furthermore, the model answer(s) serve as a basis for grading students’ responses.
An essay test may give full freedom to the students to write any number of pages. The required response may vary in length. An essay type question requires the pupil to plan his own answer and to explain it in his own words. The pupil exercises considerable freedom to select, organise and present his ideas.
A list of work related behaviors which are essential for successful completion of the job. A well designed aptitude test will contain items which measure the entire cross-section of critical incidents. To paraphrase, a properly constructed test will measure a representative sample of most critical incidents.
Test Construction. Most tests are a form of summative assessment; that is, they measure students’ performance on a given task. (For more information on summative assessment, see the CITL resource on formative and summative assessment.)McKeachie (2010) only half-jokes that “Unfortunately, it appears to be generally true that the examinations that are the easiest to construct are the most.
Guidelines for Constructing Multiple-Choice Items. A standard multiple-choice question consists of two standard parts: a problem (stem) and a list of suggested solutions (options).The stem is best written in the form of a complete question or statement.
Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) are generally recognized as the most widely applicable and useful type of objective test items. They could be used to measure the most important educational outcomes - knowledge, understanding, judgment and problem solving. The objective of this paper is to give guidelines for the construction of MCQs tests.
TRUE Essay items are generally easier and less time consuming to construct than are most objective test items. Technically correct and content appropriate mul-tiple choice and true-false test items require an extensive amount of time to write and revise. 2. Essay exams require more thorough student preparation and study time than objective exams.
Ask students to write more than one essay. Tests that ask only one question are less valid and reliable than those with a wider sampling of test items. In a fifty-minute class period, you may be able to pose three essay questions or ten short answer questions. Give students advice on how to approach an essay or short-answer test.
Description of Multiple-Choice Items 12-15 Multiple-Choice Item Writing Guidelines 16-18 Guidelines to Writing Test Items 19 Sample Multiple-Choice Items Related to Bloom’s Taxonomy 21-23 More Sample Multiple-Choice Items 24-25 Levels of Performance and Sample Prototype Items 26 Good versus Poor Multiple-Choice Items 27-28.
Strengths and Dangers of Essay Questions for Exams Charles Champlin (2006), a journalist for Time and Life magazines, describes his experience of taking essay tests as a student at Harvard: “The worst were the essay questions (which seemed only distantly related to whatever you’d read or heard in lectures).
