Keith Thiede, College of Education Andy Goodman, Center for Teaching & Learning

 Introductions  Goals ◦ Agree on higher order thinking skills ◦ Consider iterative process of test construction ◦ Consider role of item analysis ◦ Explore means of preparing students for the test ◦ Examine 2 recipes for multiple choice test construction ◦ Write at least one multiple choice test question for one of your courses

 Bloom’s taxonomy (see handouts)  Differences in higher and lower order thinking skills  Grid game ◦ information presented is factual or conceptual and represent different levels of thinking ◦ Place the objective in the appropriate block ◦ Not all spaces will be filled  Easier to write higher order thinking skills when original objective was higher order

Which one of the following objectives requires students to engage in higher-level cognitive behavior? A. Recite the alphabet B. Compare two books by the same author C. Identify the parts of the body D. List the three basic types of rocks Stem Alternatives Distractor Answer

 Expect to revise items several times.  Simple item analysis can inform this process: ◦ Examine performance on individual items (90/10 rule) ◦ Look at how well distractors worked ◦ Examine performance of top and bottom students

 Students expectations about tests affect many things: ◦ How they prepare for a test ◦ Their perceptions of the fairness of a test

 Recipe 1  Consider your learning objective (e.g., application)  Align instruction with objective (give students examples and practice applying concept)  Align assessment with objective (provide a new situation to assess whether students can apply what they have learned anew) ◦ Scenario ◦ Graph/Data

Mrs. Liu ’ s students completed research papers on life in colonial times. The students worked on their papers for several weeks and turned in their final versions at the end of the marking period. Mrs. Liu evaluated the papers and used the scores she assigned to help determine the students ’ report card grades for that marking period. This is an example of what type of assessment? A.formative B.objective C.summative D.standardized

Another Example.

 Recipe 2 – Turning essay questions into multiple choice questions  Consider what you want your students to be able to describe/do  What are the essential elements you want to see in the answer  Turn at least one of those essential elements into the correct answer  Consider less or non-essential elements that might be part of an essay response  Turn those into the distractors

 There were several Generative Approach suggestions presented in class for teaching melody (using Bruner’s learning theory). A)What are some of the important aspects to employ when planning a melody lesson for 1 st graders? B) Melody has many sub-concepts. Which aspects of melody do you attempt to teach first, second, etc.? Why?

 Jerome Bruner’s learning theory could best be applied to a music setting in which of the following scenarios? A)Students begin to develop an understanding of pitch by using sol-fege hand signs. Ks learn only sol and mi, 1 st grade adds la, 2 nd grade adds low do, etc. B) Students begin to develop an understanding of rhythm by walking to and tapping a steady beat in K, using bars that show different lengths in 1 st & 2 nd grades, and transitioning to standard notation in 3 rd. C) Students learn pitch & matching by hearing & echoing a teacher. This begins in K and continues until all children can match pitch accurately. Around 3 rd grade they learn a song by rote, then by note.

 Check out this website for test construction: olbox/tests/morethanfacts.htm olbox/tests/morethanfacts.htm

 Take 10 minutes to write one or two higher order multiple choice test questions and answers  Share with tablemates ◦ Your questions ◦ Thought process you used to create the question/responses

 Testing isn’t easy  Application or analysis are the easier higher order thinking skills to assess in multiple choice  Goal of testing is to figure out what students know or can do