1. Assessing Student Learning with Exams
Karen Kortz
Early Career Workshop 2014
Connections, Extensions, Opportunities: Concurrent Sessions

2. Why do you use exams to assess student learning?

3. Format of Exam Individual, group, two-stage (individual and group)
Open book, open notes, cheat sheet, closed everything
In class, take home
Paper, scantron, computer
Oral, written, performance

4. Different Types of Exam Questions
Objective
Multiple choice
True/False
Matching
Fill in blank
Calculations
Subjective
Short answer (write paragraph, draw sketch, fill in table, …)
Essay
Calculations
What else?

5. Objective (e.g. multiple choice) or Subjective (e.g. short answer)?
Difficult and time consuming to construct
Difficult and time consuming to grade
Efficiently measure higher order cognitive skills
Versatility in measuring all levels of cognitive ability
Depends on student's reading ability and instructor's writing ability
Tests student's ability to compose and present an answer
Wide sampling of content or objectives
May lead to favoring simple recall of facts
Subject to bias on the part of the grader

6. Deciding on the Types of Questions
What are course goals?
What is your time balance between writing questions vs. grading exams?
Do you want to reuse questions?
What is your class size?
Do you want to test additional skills (e.g. writing)?
What have you given students practice doing?
Do you want to cover a wide range of topics?
Can you grade impartially and fairly?

7. General Tips for Writing Good Exam Questions
Base questions on course goals and class goals
Emphasize what you value in class
Avoid trivia
Use clear, unambiguous wording (appropriate for the audience)
Avoid negatives
Have someone else read through them
Write down ideas for exam questions after each class

8. Evaluating Questions
How can this exam question be improved or changed?
Evidence supporting plate tectonics includes
a. the locations of earthquakes and volcanoes
b. the age of the sea floor
c. the fit of the continental coastlines (e.g. Africa and South America)
d. a and b
e. all of the above

9. Evaluating Questions
How can this exam question be improved or changed?
How have the presence of oceans on Earth influenced our greenhouse effect?

10. Write Your Own Questions
Keep in mind:
Your course goals
What question format works best in your course

11. Ideas to Get Started
Can you turn a short answer question into a multiple choice question?
Convert text to an illustration and vice versa
Ask a question that is answered by picking/marking a location on a diagram or photo
What is the best analogy?
What term doesn’t belong on this list?
Before and after questions (e.g. predict outcome)
Organize information into a table
Rank the order, size, frequency, etc. of phenomena
“Some people say that [either a correct or incorrect statement]. Do you agree? Explain your answer using at least 3 arguments or examples”