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EDUC
CHAPTER 12
TESTING STUDENTS Lizzie, Stephen, Liz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CqgnZhb--Q
“EXAMINATIONS are formidable, even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.” -CHARLES CALEB COLTON
TODAY'S OBJECTIVES
Introduction
Benefits of exams
Why should we use final exams
Different types of exams
Types of questions for objective tests
How to construct and provide quality exams
INTRODUCTION “This statement may be shocking but we love
evaluation. What may be even more shocking
is that students love being evaluated.” –
Beauchamp and Parsons
Its important to have a variety and large
number of evaluations (making many grades)
Often in a class with few evaluations, the odds
are stacked and biased against some students,
no matter how hard they work, because they
do not have the skills to succeed
BENEFITS OF EXAMS
They let students know where they are grade
wise.
They encourage students to do their best.
If students start to be successful in little things,
they gain more success in big things.
Parents will know where their kids stand (what
they are studying and how they are doing)
When students do well, they get to posture
their good grades to their parents, or others
who care.
Constant evaluation keeps students on task.
BENEFITS OF EXAMS (CONTINUED)
Constant evaluation helps students get better grades. When this happens, the class loses one of the reasons for conflict between teacher and students
The teacher and student can work cooperatively to “beat the exam.”
Having a large number of evaluations allows the teacher to justify grades, especially good grades, without hassle from administration
Smaller quizzes can be used as study guides for larger, comprehensive exams
Because different students have different abilities, a large number and variety of evaluations allow some students to succeed on one type while they may find others more difficult.
QUICK QUIZZES
A short quiz on a smaller amount of material.
The basic idea of a quick quiz is to test all the
important information within a section, not to
be selective.
Beauchamp and Parsons encourage teachers
to give a quick quiz for every chapter they use
in a textbook and to use a variety of different
quick quizzes.
The only real difference between review
activities and quick quizzes is that quick quizzes
are done without an open book.
WHY USE FINAL EXAMS
Exams give teachers a real idea of how their students are doing
Through the process of creating comprehensive exams, teachers make decisions about what content is worth knowing
A final exam helps students focus on what they are doing in the class
When students do well on comprehensive exams they are provided with a real sense of success and accomplishment
OBJECTIVE VS SUBJECTIVE
Objective...
Short answer exam,
Easier for students that know the material
Easy to grade
Subjective...
Final Essay exam
Tend to favour the smart students that have
good writing skills
Harder to grade
TYPES OF QUESTIONS FOR OBJECTIVE TESTING
Fill in the blank Questions provide a _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ that
students must know to provide an answer
May make it _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _for students to guess
Students who have a difficult time reading and _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ can have trouble with fill-in questions
May change it from fill in the blank to _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _to help the students out
These include the most important _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _from the unit
MULTIPLE CHOICE
Questions may be easy for example; a simple definition whereas more difficult ones that may include more than one choice for example; a and c might be correct
These exams are good because they correlate highly to the students knowledge, and also not biased against students with poor language skills.
TRUE OR FALSE
If the students know the information,
distinguishing between a true and false
statement is usually easy
True or False
Usually teachers make true or false questions
more difficult by having students tell why true
and false statements are true or false
True or False
True or false questions encourage students to
read the information carefully
True or False
MATCHING QUESTIONS
Teachers can cover all the important vocabulary terms and grade the questions quickly
Three hints on a good matching test
1) make matching in sections
2) you can discourage the
situation where the last few
matches are freebies
3) order each line from left to
right so that the space is first, the
definition is second and the
letter and term to be matched
are on the far right
a) adding extra choices
to the list of possible
definitions
b) makes it easier to
grade
c)no more than 25 terms
in a section, more than
this can confuse a
student
SHORT ANSWER Gives students structure for answering, but also
allows them more freedom in their answers
Short answer questions are best used for those concepts that are difficult to place in a shorter form
These questions offer teachers an opportunity to judge a students ability to reason or to synthesis information
Encourage students to answer in a more complex way
3 types of short answer
1) structured answer suggest that you know what or who these people or groups are
why these groups might be considered important
2) definitions and sentence define the following terms, after your definition, write a sentence that
uses the term you have defined in a real life context
3) synthesis
USING CLEAR DIRECTIONS
When writing exams, teachers should clearly explain what they want the students to be doing
An example of this type of question would be....
“Should the federal government support dictatorships in the middle east”
Good directions help guide student’s time through a test.
Example #1 – “Why has Western influence been so important to the growth of Japan?”
Example #2 – “In four sentences suggest why Western influence has been so important to the growth of Japan?”
USING CLEAR DIRECTIONS (CONTINUED)
Directions can encourage students to attend
to certain parts of the exam
No teacher should ever give an exam without
taking it first. Don’t assume your test is perfect
CONSTRUCTING A TEST
Make objective tests easy to grade...
If your right handed, place the space for the
answer near the left with stapling to the left
Be careful when making essay questions, as
they can be prone to problems.
If you can’t think of a thesis off the top of
your head, it’s probably not a good question
DIFFERENT TYPES OF QUESTIONS TO
CONSIDER
When creating an exam different types of
questions to consider would be
Short-answer fact based essay questions
Inference “thought” questions
Remembering the fact questions
Personal-opinion essay question
PREPARING TO GIVE THE TEST
Be sure that all students are prepared
physically
Be sure that all students are comfortable
Before beginning, specify how students should
ask questions
GIVING THE TEST
It is useful to read the test instructions aloud
before beginning the test
You should be available to answer questions
during the test
Avoid making disrupting noises during the test
To end the test in an organized fashion, you
should take up all remaining papers when time
is called
TEST SCORING
No matter if the test is objective or subjective, your scoring should always be as objective as possible
Make a key for scoring the test
If a large number of students miss a relatively easy question, be suspicious of the question
Invariably, subjective questions will draw responses that are not exactly right or wrong, when this occurs give partial marks
Conceal your student’s name while marking.