educational assessment of students 524 - january 2020/textbook...title powerpoint presentation...

Educational Assessment of Students7e

Susan M. Brookhart & Anthony J. Nitko

Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Chapter 9

Fill-in-the-Blank andTrue-False Items

Educational Assessment of Students, 7eBrookhart & Nitko

Copyright © 2015, 2012, 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc.

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Key Concept #1

• Align assessments to the content and performance requirements of your learning objectives.



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Three Fundamental Principles for Crafting Assessments

• Focus each assessment task entirely on important learning objectives (content and performance).

• Craft each assessment task to elicit from students only the knowledge and performance that are relevant to the learning objectives you are assessing.

• Ensure that each assessment task does not inhibit a student’s ability to demonstrate attainment of the learning objectives you are assessing by drawing on other, nonessential knowledge or skills.



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Key Concept #2

• Fill-in-the-blank items require a word, short phrase, number, or symbol response.



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Varieties of Fill-in-the-Blank Formats

• Question: A direct question that the student answers. What is the capital city of Pennsylvania?

• Completion: An incomplete sentence that the student must complete. The capital city of Pennsylvania is ___

• Association : a list of terms or a picture for which students have to recall numbers, labels, symbols, or other terms On the blank next to the name of each chemical

element, write the symbol used for it.



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Usefulness of Fill-in-the-Blank Items

• To assess students’ performance of lower-order thinking skills such as recall and comprehension

• To assess students’ ability to make simple interpretations of data and applications of rules

• To assess students’ ability to solve numerical problems in science and mathematics.

• To assess students’ ability to manipulate mathematical symbols and balance mathematical and chemical equations.



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Strengths and Shortcomings, Fill-in-the-Blank Items

• Easy to construct

• Can be scored objectively

Sometimes must make subjective judgments in scoring, especially when answers are unanticipated

Spelling errors, grammatical errors, and legibility also tend to complicate the scoring process

• Lowers the probability a student gets the answer correct by random guessing

• Can award “partial credit”



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Guidelines: Creating Fill-in-the-Blank Items

• Assess only important performance and content.

• Match tasks to your learning targets and the assessment plan.

• Use the question format.

• Word the items specifically and clearly.

• Put the blank toward the end of the sentence.

• Do not copy statements verbatim.



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Guidelines: Creating Fill-in-the-Blank Items

• Omit important words and not trivial words.

• Limit blanks to one or two.

• Keep all blanks the same length.

• Specify the precision you expect in the answer.

• Avoid irrelevant clues.



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Key Concept #3

• A true-false item consists of a statement or a proposition that a student must judge and mark as either true or false.



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Varieties of True-False Items

• true-false

judgment of proposition

• yes-no

direct question with yes/no answer

• right-wrong

judgment of computation, equation, or sentence

• correction

judgment of proposition with correction of false statements



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Varieties of True-False Items

• multiple true-false

stem plus options, like multiple choice, with judgment of each option as true or false

• yes-no with explanation

direct question with justification for response



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Key Concept #4

• True-false items are very useful, because judging the truth of a proposition is important to thinking in any discipline.

• Most criticisms of true-false items are actually criticisms of poorly constructed true-false items.



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Advantages of True-False Items

• Certain aspects of the subject matter readily lend themselves to verbal propositions that can be judged true or false.

• They are relatively easy to write.

• They can be scored easily and objectively.

• They can cover a wide range of content within a relatively short period.



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Criticisms of True-False Items

• Poorly constructed true-false items:

assess only specific, frequently trivial facts

are ambiguously worded

are answered correctly by random guessing

encourage students to study and accept only oversimplified statements of truth and factual details



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Writing True-False Items

• First, identify propositions that

a) represent important ideas

b) can be defended by competent critics as true or false

c) are not obviously correct to persons with general knowledge or good common sense who have not studied the subject.



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Writing True-False Items

• Create pairs of items, one true and one false, related to the same idea, even though you will use only one.

• If your statement asks students to make evaluative judgments, try to rephrase it as a comparative statement.

• Write false statements that reflect the actual misconceptions held by students who have not achieved the learning objectives.

• Convert a multiple-choice item into two or more true-false items.



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Suggestions for Improving True-False Items

• Make sure each item assesses an important aspect of the unit’s instructional targets

• Make sure each item matches your assessment plan.

• Assess important ideas, rather than trivia, general knowledge, or common sense.

• Make sure the item is either definitely true or

• definitely false.

• Avoid copying sentences verbatim.



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Suggestions for Improving True-False Items

• True and false statements should have approximately the same number of words.

• Don’t present items in a repetitive or easily learned pattern.

• Do not use verbal clues (specific determiners) that give away the answer.

• Attribute the opinion in a statement to an appropriate source.



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Multiple True-False Items

**Which of the following were roles colonial women played in the American Revolution?

1. They served as officers in the army. T F

2. They followed soldiers in camps, T F

cooking and washing.

3. They kept the farms and shops running T F

during the war.



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Advantages of Multiple True-False Items

• Students can make two or three multiple true-false responses in the same time it takes them to answer one multiple-choice item.

• A multiple true-false test created from multiple-choice items has a higher reliability than the original multiple-choice test.

• Multiple true-false items can assess the same abilities as straight multiple-choice items designed to assess parallel content.



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Advantages of Multiple True-False Items

• Students believe that multiple true-false items do a better job of assessing their knowledge than straight multiple-choice items.

• Students perceive multiple true-false items to be slightly harder than straight multiple-choice items.

• Multiple true-false items may be easier to write than multiple-choice items.



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Limitations of Multiple True-False Items

• May not be appropriate for assessing higher-order thinking

• Have other limitations associated with multiple-choice items (see Chapter 10)

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