Chatper 6: Creating Good Test Questions

The first component of creating a successful test is to not try and trick students. Even in college, I have experienced professors who provide multiple correct answers and expect students to weed through them and find the “correct” one. As a teacher, I do not intend to confuse my students by providing them such opinion based questions as the one seen in the beginning of this chapter. Instead, they should be permitted to explore each of these options in a essay or another method which allows them expression rather than a mere guessing game. In using constructed choice rather than forced choice questions, the instructor pushes the student to think for his or herself as opposed to providing answers and allowing the student to guess. This method pushes the student further and allows intellectual growth rather than an answer the student was barely involved with. I enjoyed how this chapter really broke down effective methods of formulating tests. For example, when creating a matching test, the teacher is instructed to put definitions on the left with vocabulary on the right. This allows the student to interpret the definition before then applying it to the information the students are studying. Another tip that I enjoyed was that the chapter suggested multiple ways to comfort the student. Rather than causing them to stress about their test, one method of showing students the results of their hard work is to have them create two copies of their answers so that they are aware of just how well they have done. While many aspects of this chapter were self explanatory, it was nice to receive basic guidelines regarding how best to guide students through the test process and how to create tests which best test student mastery.