identify the main characteristics of essay and objective test

Essay Test vs Objective Test

An essay item is one in which the examinee relies upon his memory and past associations to answer the questions in a few words only. Since such items can be answered in whatever manner one likes and these items are also known as free answer items.

Essay items are most appropriate for measuring higher mental processes which involve the process of synthesis, analysis, evaluation, organization and criticism of the events of the past. Essay tests are thus suitable for measuring traits like critical thinking, originality and the ability to integrate synthesis or analyze different events.

Types of essay items

Essay items are of two types

• Short answer types
• Long answer type / Extended answer essay type

A short answer essay item is one where the examinee supplies the answer In one or two lines and is usually concerned with one central concept.

A long answer essay item is one where the examinee’s answer comprises several sentences. Such an item is usually concerned with more than one central concept.

Suggestions for Writing Good Essay Items

1 – An essay item must contain explicitly defined problems usually essay items are intended to measure the higher mental process as such its essential that they contain problems in clear cut and explicit terms so that every examinee interprets them in more or less the same way. Therefore, essay item is set to be not valid if its interpretation varies among examinees

2 – It must contain such problems whose answers are not very wide. In case a student is asked to answer a problem with a larger content area. He may start writing whatever he knows without making any discrimination in such a situation he may not write about the facts or information needed by the item, thus lowering the validity of the essay item.

3 – Essay items must have clear cut directions or instructions for the examinees the instruction should indicate the total time to be spent on any particular test item. What type of information is required and the likely weight age to be given to each item so that the examinee may pick up the relative importance of the essay questions and accordingly adjust the length of the answer.

4 – Sufficient time should be allowed in the construction of essay items such items measure the higher mental processes and in order that they actually measure what they intend to measure. It is essential that essay items are carefully worded and ordered so that all the items can be interrupted in the same way.

Difference between Essay tests and Objective Tests

1 – In essay items the examinee writes the answer in her/his own words whereas the in objective type of tests the examinee selects the correct answer from the among several given alternatives.

2 – Thinking and writing are important in essay tests whereas reading and thinking are important in objective type tests. In essay tests the examinee answers the questions in several lines. S/he critically thinks over the problems posed by the questions and arranges the idea in sequence and expresses them in writing. In objective type the examinee doesn’t have to write in many cases. He is simply asked to put a tick/mark. However, in order to make a correct choice he is required to read both the stem as well as the alternative answers very carefully and then critically think and decide.

3 – It is difficult to score objectivity and accurately in essay tests whereas in objective tests can be easily scored objectively and accurately.

4 – Essay tests are difficult to evaluate objectively and partially because the answers are not fixed like the answers of objective items because of the variability in the scorer judgment regarding the contents of the answers in the objective types of tests whether of the selection or supply type scoring can be done accurately because the answers are fixed in them. The scoring will also be objective because when the answers are fixed there will obviously be complete interpersonal agreement among the students.

5 – In objective type tests the quality of the item is dependent upon the skill of the test constructor but in essay test the quality of the item is dependent upon the scorer’s skill. Writing item for an objective type test is a relatively difficult task. Only a skilled test constructor can write good objective items. The quality of the test items are bound to suffer. If the test constructor lacks skill in writing items as well as limited knowledge regarding the subject matter items in essay tests are easy to construct. A test constructor is even with a minimum knowledge of writing items can prepare relatively good essay items.

6 – Objective test items no matter how well they are constructed permit and encourage guessing by the examinee whereas essay test items no matter how well they are constructed permit and encourage bluffing by examinees. In objective type test items the probability of guessing can’t be fully nullified. The effect of the guessing is the inflation of the actual score obtained on the test. Guessing is the most obvious when the length of the test is short and the two alternative objectives form is used or when difficult alternative responses are included in multiple choice items or matching items and the length of the test is short.

7 – Assignment of numerical scores in essay test items is entirely in the hands of the scorer whereas assignment of numerical scores in objective type test items is entirely determined by the scoring key of the manual.

Common Points between Essay Tests and Objective Tests

Despite of all these differences following are the common points or main similarities that lie in essay test or objective test.

• An element of subjectivity is involved in both objective type as well as essay tests. In objective tests subjectivity is involved in writing the test items in selecting particular criterion for validation of the test. In essay tests subjectivity is involved in writing and selecting the items. The most obvious effect of the subjectivity in essay test is seen in scoring of the essay items.
• In both essay tests as well as objective type tests, emphasize is placed upon the objectivity in the interpretation of the test scores. By objectivity is meant the score must mean nearly the same to all observers or graders who have assigned it. If this is not so it means that the scoring lacks objectivity thus reducing the usefulness of the score.
• Any educational achievement such as the ability to spell the English words, proficiency in grammar, and performance in history, geography, and educational psychology can be measured through both the essay test and objective type tests.

When the intention is to measure critical thinking, originality and the organizational ability essay tests are preferred but when the intention is to measure the piecemeal knowledge in any subject, objective type tests are preferred.

However, this line of demarcation is fast vanishing now because objective items have been used effectively for measuring achievement representing, critical thinking and originality of the examinees. Likewise, essay items particularly short answer essay items have been successfully used in measuring achievement representing piecemeal knowledge of any subject.

• Tags: Essay Test , Essay Test vs Objective Test , Essay Writing , Objective Test , Subjective Test , Writing Good Essay

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Essay Test Preparation Tips and Strategies

Essay test questions can be very intimidating, but they can also be very rewarding. Unlike other types of exams (i.e., multiple choice, true or false, etc.) essay tests allow you develop an answer based on your understanding or knowledge.

If you’ve studied all semester, understand the course concepts, and have reviewed prior to the test, the following strategies can help you improve your performance on essay tests and exams.

Strategies to Help You Improve Your Performance on Essay Tests and Exams

Read the directions.

Reading the directions seems so obvious. Unfortunately, it’s still one of the biggest test taking mistakes students make. Before answering an essay question, thoroughly read the instructions. Do not jump to the answer without being sure of what exactly the question is asking. In many cases, the teacher is looking for specific types of responses. Never assume you know what is being asked, or what is required, until you’ve read the entire question.

Ask for clarification

Read essay questions in their entirety before preparing an answer. If the instructions are unclear, or you simply don’t understand a question, ask the teacher for clarification. Chances are if you’re confused so is someone else. Never be scared to ask for clarification from your teacher or instructor.

Provide detail

Provide as many details and specific examples when answering an essay question as you can. Teachers are usually looking for very specific responses to see whether or not you’ve learned the material. The more relevant detail you provide, the higher grade is likely to be. However, only include correct, accurate and relevant information. Including irrelevant “filler” that doesn’t support your answer will likely lower your grade.

Budget your time

Manage your time wisely when answering essay questions so you are able answer all the questions, not just the easy or hard ones. If you finish your test before time is up, go back and review your answers and provide additional details.

We recommend answering those essay questions you’re most familiar with first and then tackling more challenging questions after. It’s also not uncommon on essay tests for some questions to be worth more than others. When budgeting your time, make sure to allocate more time to those questions that are worth the most.

Follow the instructions

When a question is only requiring facts, be sure to avoid sharing opinions. Only provide the information the instructions request. It’s important to provide an answer that matches the type of essay question being asked. You’ll find a list of common types of essay questions at the bottom of this page.

In your answers, get to the point and be very clear. It is generally best to be as concise as possible. If you provide numerous facts or details, be sure they’re related to the question. A typical essay answer should be between 200 and 800 words (2-8 paragraphs) but more isn’t necessarily better. Focus on substance over quantity.

Write clearly and legibly

Be sure your essays are legible and easy to understand. If a teacher has a difficult time reading or understanding what you’ve written, you could receive a lower score.

Get organized

Organize your thoughts before answering your essay question. We even recommend developing a short outline before preparing your answer. This strategy will help you save time and keep your essay organized. Organizing your thoughts and preparing a short outline will allow you to write more clearly and concisely.

Get to the point – Focus on substance

Only spend time answering the question and keep your essays focused. An overly long introduction and conclusion can be unnecessary. If your essay does not thoroughly answer the question and provide substance, a well developed introduction or conclusion will do you no good.

Use paragraphs to separate ideas

When developing your essay, keep main ideas and other important details separated with paragraphs. An essay response should have three parts: the introduction; the body; and the conclusion. The introduction is typically one paragraph, as is the conclusion. The body of the essay usually consists of 2 to 6 paragraphs depending on the type of essay and the information being presented.

Go back and review

If time permits, review your answers and make changes if necessary. Make sure you employed correct grammar and that your essays are well written. It’s not uncommon to make silly mistakes your first time through your essay. Reviewing your work is always a good idea.

Approximate

When you are unsure of specific dates, just approximate dates. For example, if you know an event occurred sometime during the 1820’s, then just write, “in the early 1800’s.”

Common Question Types on Essay Exams

Being able to identify and becoming familiar with the most common types of essay test questions is key to improving performance on essay exams. The following are 5 of the most common question types you’ll find on essay exams.

1. Identify

Identify essay questions ask for short, concise answers and typically do not require a fully developed essay.

• Ask yourself: “What is the idea or concept in question?”, “What are the main characteristics?”, “What does this mean?”
• Keywords to look for: Summarize, List, Describe, Define, Enumerate, State
• Example question: “Define what is meant by ‘separation of church and state.'”

Explain essay questions require a full-length essay with a fully developed response that provides ample supporting detail.

• Ask yourself: “What are the main points?”, “Why is this the case?”
• Keywords to look for: Discuss, Explain, Analyze, Illustrate
• Example question: “Discuss the differences between the political views of democrats and republicans. Use specific examples from each party’s 2017 presidential campaign to argue which views are more in line with U.S. national interests.”

Compare essay questions require an analysis in essay form which focuses on similarities, differences, and connections between specific ideas or concepts.

• Ask yourself: “What are the main concepts or ideas?”, “What are the similarities?”, “What are the differences?”
• Keywords to look for: Compare, Contrast, Relate
• Example question: “Compare the value of attending a community college to the value of attending a 4-year university. Which would you rather attend?”

Argue essay questions require you to form an opinion or take a position on an issue and defend your position against alternative positions using arguments backed by analysis and information.

• Ask yourself: “Is this position correct?”, “Why is this issue true?”
• Keywords to look for: Prove, Justify
• Example question: “Argue whether robotics will replace blue collar manufacturing jobs in the next ten years.”

Assess essay questions involve assessing an issue, idea or question by describing acceptable criteria and defending a position/judgment on the issue.

• Ask yourself: “What is the main idea/issue and what does it mean?”, “Why is the issue important?”, “What are its strengths?”, “What are the weaknesses?”
• Keywords to look for: Evaluate, Criticize, Evaluate, Interpret
• Example question: “With respect to U.S. national security, evaluate the benefit of constructing a wall along the southern border of the United States of America.”

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• The four main types of essay | Quick guide with examples

The Four Main Types of Essay | Quick Guide with Examples

Published on September 4, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An essay is a focused piece of writing designed to inform or persuade. There are many different types of essay, but they are often defined in four categories: argumentative, expository, narrative, and descriptive essays.

Argumentative and expository essays are focused on conveying information and making clear points, while narrative and descriptive essays are about exercising creativity and writing in an interesting way. At university level, argumentative essays are the most common type. 

In high school and college, you will also often have to write textual analysis essays, which test your skills in close reading and interpretation.

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Table of contents

Argumentative essays, expository essays, narrative essays, descriptive essays, textual analysis essays, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about types of essays.

An argumentative essay presents an extended, evidence-based argument. It requires a strong thesis statement —a clearly defined stance on your topic. Your aim is to convince the reader of your thesis using evidence (such as quotations ) and analysis.

Argumentative essays test your ability to research and present your own position on a topic. This is the most common type of essay at college level—most papers you write will involve some kind of argumentation.

The essay is divided into an introduction, body, and conclusion:

• The introduction provides your topic and thesis statement
• The body presents your evidence and arguments
• The conclusion summarizes your argument and emphasizes its importance

The example below is a paragraph from the body of an argumentative essay about the effects of the internet on education. Mouse over it to learn more.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

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An expository essay provides a clear, focused explanation of a topic. It doesn’t require an original argument, just a balanced and well-organized view of the topic.

Expository essays test your familiarity with a topic and your ability to organize and convey information. They are commonly assigned at high school or in exam questions at college level.

The introduction of an expository essay states your topic and provides some general background, the body presents the details, and the conclusion summarizes the information presented.

A typical body paragraph from an expository essay about the invention of the printing press is shown below. Mouse over it to learn more.

The invention of the printing press in 1440 changed this situation dramatically. Johannes Gutenberg, who had worked as a goldsmith, used his knowledge of metals in the design of the press. He made his type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, whose durability allowed for the reliable production of high-quality books. This new technology allowed texts to be reproduced and disseminated on a much larger scale than was previously possible. The Gutenberg Bible appeared in the 1450s, and a large number of printing presses sprang up across the continent in the following decades. Gutenberg’s invention rapidly transformed cultural production in Europe; among other things, it would lead to the Protestant Reformation.

A narrative essay is one that tells a story. This is usually a story about a personal experience you had, but it may also be an imaginative exploration of something you have not experienced.

Narrative essays test your ability to build up a narrative in an engaging, well-structured way. They are much more personal and creative than other kinds of academic writing . Writing a personal statement for an application requires the same skills as a narrative essay.

A narrative essay isn’t strictly divided into introduction, body, and conclusion, but it should still begin by setting up the narrative and finish by expressing the point of the story—what you learned from your experience, or why it made an impression on you.

Mouse over the example below, a short narrative essay responding to the prompt “Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself,” to explore its structure.

Since elementary school, I have always favored subjects like science and math over the humanities. My instinct was always to think of these subjects as more solid and serious than classes like English. If there was no right answer, I thought, why bother? But recently I had an experience that taught me my academic interests are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was skeptical. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve—I really had no idea. I imagined something pretty abstract: long, stilted conversations pondering the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite different.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones—“but you can call me Rob”—was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had half-expected. And rather than pulling us into pedantic arguments about obscure philosophical points, Rob engaged us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own choices. To talk ethics, we looked at dilemmas we had faced ourselves. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most interesting ones.

The experience has taught me to look at things a little more “philosophically”—and not just because it was a philosophy class! I learned that if I let go of my preconceptions, I can actually get a lot out of subjects I was previously dismissive of. The class taught me—in more ways than one—to look at things with an open mind.

A descriptive essay provides a detailed sensory description of something. Like narrative essays, they allow you to be more creative than most academic writing, but they are more tightly focused than narrative essays. You might describe a specific place or object, rather than telling a whole story.

Descriptive essays test your ability to use language creatively, making striking word choices to convey a memorable picture of what you’re describing.

A descriptive essay can be quite loosely structured, though it should usually begin by introducing the object of your description and end by drawing an overall picture of it. The important thing is to use careful word choices and figurative language to create an original description of your object.

Mouse over the example below, a response to the prompt “Describe a place you love to spend time in,” to learn more about descriptive essays.

On Sunday afternoons I like to spend my time in the garden behind my house. The garden is narrow but long, a corridor of green extending from the back of the house, and I sit on a lawn chair at the far end to read and relax. I am in my small peaceful paradise: the shade of the tree, the feel of the grass on my feet, the gentle activity of the fish in the pond beside me.

My cat crosses the garden nimbly and leaps onto the fence to survey it from above. From his perch he can watch over his little kingdom and keep an eye on the neighbours. He does this until the barking of next door’s dog scares him from his post and he bolts for the cat flap to govern from the safety of the kitchen.

With that, I am left alone with the fish, whose whole world is the pond by my feet. The fish explore the pond every day as if for the first time, prodding and inspecting every stone. I sometimes feel the same about sitting here in the garden; I know the place better than anyone, but whenever I return I still feel compelled to pay attention to all its details and novelties—a new bird perched in the tree, the growth of the grass, and the movement of the insects it shelters…

Sitting out in the garden, I feel serene. I feel at home. And yet I always feel there is more to discover. The bounds of my garden may be small, but there is a whole world contained within it, and it is one I will never get tired of inhabiting.

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Though every essay type tests your writing skills, some essays also test your ability to read carefully and critically. In a textual analysis essay, you don’t just present information on a topic, but closely analyze a text to explain how it achieves certain effects.

Rhetorical analysis

A rhetorical analysis looks at a persuasive text (e.g. a speech, an essay, a political cartoon) in terms of the rhetorical devices it uses, and evaluates their effectiveness.

The goal is not to state whether you agree with the author’s argument but to look at how they have constructed it.

The introduction of a rhetorical analysis presents the text, some background information, and your thesis statement; the body comprises the analysis itself; and the conclusion wraps up your analysis of the text, emphasizing its relevance to broader concerns.

The example below is from a rhetorical analysis of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech . Mouse over it to learn more.

King’s speech is infused with prophetic language throughout. Even before the famous “dream” part of the speech, King’s language consistently strikes a prophetic tone. He refers to the Lincoln Memorial as a “hallowed spot” and speaks of rising “from the dark and desolate valley of segregation” to “make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” The assumption of this prophetic voice constitutes the text’s strongest ethical appeal; after linking himself with political figures like Lincoln and the Founding Fathers, King’s ethos adopts a distinctly religious tone, recalling Biblical prophets and preachers of change from across history. This adds significant force to his words; standing before an audience of hundreds of thousands, he states not just what the future should be, but what it will be: “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.” This warning is almost apocalyptic in tone, though it concludes with the positive image of the “bright day of justice.” The power of King’s rhetoric thus stems not only from the pathos of his vision of a brighter future, but from the ethos of the prophetic voice he adopts in expressing this vision.

Literary analysis

A literary analysis essay presents a close reading of a work of literature—e.g. a poem or novel—to explore the choices made by the author and how they help to convey the text’s theme. It is not simply a book report or a review, but an in-depth interpretation of the text.

Literary analysis looks at things like setting, characters, themes, and figurative language. The goal is to closely analyze what the author conveys and how.

The introduction of a literary analysis essay presents the text and background, and provides your thesis statement; the body consists of close readings of the text with quotations and analysis in support of your argument; and the conclusion emphasizes what your approach tells us about the text.

Mouse over the example below, the introduction to a literary analysis essay on Frankenstein , to learn more.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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At high school and in composition classes at university, you’ll often be told to write a specific type of essay , but you might also just be given prompts.

Look for keywords in these prompts that suggest a certain approach: The word “explain” suggests you should write an expository essay , while the word “describe” implies a descriptive essay . An argumentative essay might be prompted with the word “assess” or “argue.”

The vast majority of essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Almost all academic writing involves building up an argument, though other types of essay might be assigned in composition classes.

Essays can present arguments about all kinds of different topics. For example:

• In a literary analysis essay, you might make an argument for a specific interpretation of a text
• In a history essay, you might present an argument for the importance of a particular event
• In a politics essay, you might argue for the validity of a certain political theory

An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

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Exam Questions: Types, Characteristics, and Suggestions

Examinations are a very common assessment and evaluation tool in universities and there are many types of examination questions. This tips sheet contains a brief description of seven types of examination questions, as well as tips for using each of them: 1) multiple choice, 2) true/false, 3) matching, 4) short answer, 5) essay, 6) oral, and 7) computational. Remember that some exams can be conducted effectively in a secure online environment in a proctored computer lab or assigned as paper based or online “take home” exams.

Multiple choice

Multiple choice questions are composed of one question (stem) with multiple possible answers (choices), including the correct answer and several incorrect answers (distractors). Typically, students select the correct answer by circling the associated number or letter, or filling in the associated circle on the machine-readable response sheet.

Example : Distractors are:

A) Elements of the exam layout that distract attention from the questions B) Incorrect but plausible choices used in multiple choice questions C) Unnecessary clauses included in the stem of multiple choice questions Answer: B

Students can generally respond to these type of questions quite quickly. As a result, they are often used to test student’s knowledge of a broad range of content. Creating these questions can be time consuming because it is often difficult to generate several plausible distractors. However, they can be marked very quickly.

Tips for writing good multiple choice items:

Suggestion : After each lecture during the term, jot down two or three multiple choice questions based on the material for that lecture. Regularly taking a few minutes to compose questions, while the material is fresh in your mind, will allow you to develop a question bank that you can use to construct tests and exams quickly and easily.

True/false questions are only composed of a statement. Students respond to the questions by indicating whether the statement is true or false. For example: True/false questions have only two possible answers (Answer: True).

Like multiple choice questions, true/false questions:

• Are most often used to assess familiarity with course content and to check for popular misconceptions
• Allow students to respond quickly so exams can use a large number of them to test knowledge of a broad range of content
• Are easy and quick to grade but time consuming to create

True/false questions provide students with a 50% chance of guessing the right answer. For this reason, multiple choice questions are often used instead of true/false questions.

Tips for writing good true/false items:

Suggestion : You can increase the usefulness of true/false questions by asking students to correct false statements.

Students respond to matching questions by pairing each of a set of stems (e.g., definitions) with one of the choices provided on the exam. These questions are often used to assess recognition and recall and so are most often used in courses where acquisition of detailed knowledge is an important goal. They are generally quick and easy to create and mark, but students require more time to respond to these questions than a similar number of multiple choice or true/false items.

Example: Match each question type with one attribute:

• Multiple Choice a) Only two possible answers
• True/False b) Equal number of stems and choices
• Matching c) Only one correct answer but at least three choices

Tips for writing good matching items:

Suggestion:  You can use some choices more than once in the same matching exercise. It reduces the effects of guessing.

Short answer

Short answer questions are typically composed of a brief prompt that demands a written answer that varies in length from one or two words to a few sentences. They are most often used to test basic knowledge of key facts and terms. An example this kind of short answer question follows:

“What do you call an exam format in which students must uniquely associate a set of prompts with a set of options?” Answer: Matching questions

Alternatively, this could be written as a fill-in-the-blank short answer question:

“An exam question in which students must uniquely associate prompts and options is called a ___________ question.” Answer: Matching.

Short answer questions can also be used to test higher thinking skills, including analysis or evaluation. For example:

“Will you include short answer questions on your next exam? Please justify your decision with two to three sentences explaining the factors that have influenced your decision.”

Short answer questions have many advantages. Many instructors report that they are relatively easy to construct and can be constructed faster than multiple choice questions. Unlike matching, true/false, and multiple choice questions, short answer questions make it difficult for students to guess the answer. Short answer questions provide students with more flexibility to explain their understanding and demonstrate creativity than they would have with multiple choice questions; this also means that scoring is relatively laborious and can be quite subjective. Short answer questions provide more structure than essay questions and thus are often easy and faster to mark and often test a broader range of the course content than full essay questions.

Tips for writing good short answer items:

Suggestion : When using short answer questions to test student knowledge of definitions consider having a mix of questions, some that supply the term and require the students to provide the definition, and other questions that supply the definition and require that students provide the term. The latter sort of questions can be structured as fill-in-the-blank questions. This mix of formats will better test student knowledge because it doesn’t rely solely on recognition or recall of the term.

Essay questions provide a complex prompt that requires written responses, which can vary in length from a couple of paragraphs to many pages. Like short answer questions, they provide students with an opportunity to explain their understanding and demonstrate creativity, but make it hard for students to arrive at an acceptable answer by bluffing. They can be constructed reasonably quickly and easily but marking these questions can be time-consuming and grader agreement can be difficult.

Essay questions differ from short answer questions in that the essay questions are less structured. This openness allows students to demonstrate that they can integrate the course material in creative ways. As a result, essays are a favoured approach to test higher levels of cognition including analysis, synthesis and evaluation. However, the requirement that the students provide most of the structure increases the amount of work required to respond effectively. Students often take longer to compose a five paragraph essay than they would take to compose five one paragraph answers to short answer questions. This increased workload limits the number of essay questions that can be posed on a single exam and thus can restrict the overall scope of an exam to a few topics or areas. To ensure that this doesn’t cause students to panic or blank out, consider giving the option of answering one of two or more questions.

Tips for writing good essay items:

Suggestions : Distribute possible essay questions before the exam and make your marking criteria slightly stricter. This gives all students an equal chance to prepare and should improve the quality of the answers – and the quality of learning – without making the exam any easier.

Oral examinations allow students to respond directly to the instructor’s questions and/or to present prepared statements. These exams are especially popular in language courses that demand ‘speaking’ but they can be used to assess understanding in almost any course by following the guidelines for the composition of short answer questions. Some of the principle advantages to oral exams are that they provide nearly immediate feedback and so allow the student to learn as they are tested. There are two main drawbacks to oral exams: the amount of time required and the problem of record-keeping. Oral exams typically take at least ten to fifteen minutes per student, even for a midterm exam. As a result, they are rarely used for large classes. Furthermore, unlike written exams, oral exams don’t automatically generate a written record. To ensure that students have access to written feedback, it is recommended that instructors take notes during oral exams using a rubric and/or checklist and provide a photocopy of the notes to the students.

In many departments, oral exams are rare. Students may have difficulty adapting to this new style of assessment. In this situation, consider making the oral exam optional. While it can take more time to prepare two tests, having both options allows students to choose the one which suits them and their learning style best.

Computational

Computational questions require that students perform calculations in order to solve for an answer. Computational questions can be used to assess student’s memory of solution techniques and their ability to apply those techniques to solve both questions they have attempted before and questions that stretch their abilities by requiring that they combine and use solution techniques in novel ways.

Effective computational questions should:

• Be solvable using knowledge of the key concepts and techniques from the course. Before the exam solve them yourself or get a teaching assistant to attempt the questions.
• Indicate the mark breakdown to reinforce the expectations developed in in-class examples for the amount of detail, etc. required for the solution.

To prepare students to do computational questions on exams, make sure to describe and model in class the correct format for the calculations and answer including:

• How students should report their assumptions and justify their choices
• The units and degree of precision expected in the answer

Suggestion : Have students divide their answer sheets into two columns: calculations in one, and a list of assumptions, description of process and justification of choices in the other. This ensures that the marker can distinguish between a simple mathematical mistake and a profound conceptual error and give feedback accordingly.

If you would like support applying these tips to your own teaching, CTE staff members are here to help.  View the  CTE Support  page to find the most relevant staff member to contact.

• Cunningham, G.K. (1998). Assessment in the Classroom. Bristol, PA: Falmer Press.
• Ward, A.W., & Murray-Ward, M. (1999). Assessment in the Classroom. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co.

This Creative Commons license  lets others remix, tweak, and build upon our work non-commercially, as long as they credit us and indicate if changes were made. Use this citation format:  Exam questions: types, characteristics and suggestions . Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo .

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Essay Exams

What this handout is about.

At some time in your undergraduate career, you’re going to have to write an essay exam. This thought can inspire a fair amount of fear: we struggle enough with essays when they aren’t timed events based on unknown questions. The goal of this handout is to give you some easy and effective strategies that will help you take control of the situation and do your best.

Why do instructors give essay exams?

Essay exams are a useful tool for finding out if you can sort through a large body of information, figure out what is important, and explain why it is important. Essay exams challenge you to come up with key course ideas and put them in your own words and to use the interpretive or analytical skills you’ve practiced in the course. Instructors want to see whether:

• You understand concepts that provide the basis for the course
• You can use those concepts to interpret specific materials
• You can make connections, see relationships, draw comparisons and contrasts
• You can synthesize diverse information in support of an original assertion
• You can justify your own evaluations based on appropriate criteria
• You can argue your own opinions with convincing evidence
• You can think critically and analytically about a subject

What essay questions require

Exam questions can reach pretty far into the course materials, so you cannot hope to do well on them if you do not keep up with the readings and assignments from the beginning of the course. The most successful essay exam takers are prepared for anything reasonable, and they probably have some intelligent guesses about the content of the exam before they take it. How can you be a prepared exam taker? Try some of the following suggestions during the semester:

• Do the reading as the syllabus dictates; keeping up with the reading while the related concepts are being discussed in class saves you double the effort later.
• Go to lectures (and put away your phone, the newspaper, and that crossword puzzle!).
• Take careful notes that you’ll understand months later. If this is not your strong suit or the conventions for a particular discipline are different from what you are used to, ask your TA or the Learning Center for advice.
• Participate in your discussion sections; this will help you absorb the material better so you don’t have to study as hard.
• Organize small study groups with classmates to explore and review course materials throughout the semester. Others will catch things you might miss even when paying attention. This is not cheating. As long as what you write on the essay is your own work, formulating ideas and sharing notes is okay. In fact, it is a big part of the learning process.
• As an exam approaches, find out what you can about the form it will take. This will help you forecast the questions that will be on the exam, and prepare for them.

These suggestions will save you lots of time and misery later. Remember that you can’t cram weeks of information into a single day or night of study. So why put yourself in that position?

Now let’s focus on studying for the exam. You’ll notice the following suggestions are all based on organizing your study materials into manageable chunks of related material. If you have a plan of attack, you’ll feel more confident and your answers will be more clear. Here are some tips: 

• Don’t just memorize aimlessly; clarify the important issues of the course and use these issues to focus your understanding of specific facts and particular readings.
• Try to organize and prioritize the information into a thematic pattern. Look at what you’ve studied and find a way to put things into related groups. Find the fundamental ideas that have been emphasized throughout the course and organize your notes into broad categories. Think about how different categories relate to each other.
• Find out what you don’t know, but need to know, by making up test questions and trying to answer them. Studying in groups helps as well.

Taking the exam

Read the exam carefully.

• If you are given the entire exam at once and can determine your approach on your own, read the entire exam before you get started.
• Look at how many points each part earns you, and find hints for how long your answers should be.
• Figure out how much time you have and how best to use it. Write down the actual clock time that you expect to take in each section, and stick to it. This will help you avoid spending all your time on only one section. One strategy is to divide the available time according to percentage worth of the question. You don’t want to spend half of your time on something that is only worth one tenth of the total points.
• As you read, make tentative choices of the questions you will answer (if you have a choice). Don’t just answer the first essay question you encounter. Instead, read through all of the options. Jot down really brief ideas for each question before deciding.
• Remember that the easiest-looking question is not always as easy as it looks. Focus your attention on questions for which you can explain your answer most thoroughly, rather than settle on questions where you know the answer but can’t say why.

Analyze the questions

• Decide what you are being asked to do. If you skim the question to find the main “topic” and then rush to grasp any related ideas you can recall, you may become flustered, lose concentration, and even go blank. Try looking closely at what the question is directing you to do, and try to understand the sort of writing that will be required.
• Focus on what you do know about the question, not on what you don’t.
• Look at the active verbs in the assignment—they tell you what you should be doing. We’ve included some of these below, with some suggestions on what they might mean. (For help with this sort of detective work, see the Writing Center handout titled Reading Assignments.)

Information words, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject. Information words may include:

• define—give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning.
• explain why/how—give reasons why or examples of how something happened.
• illustrate—give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject.
• summarize—briefly cover the important ideas you learned about the subject.
• trace—outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form.
• research—gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you’ve found.

Relation words ask you to demonstrate how things are connected. Relation words may include:

• compare—show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different).
• contrast—show how two or more things are dissimilar.
• apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation.
• cause—show how one event or series of events made something else happen.
• relate—show or describe the connections between things.

Interpretation words ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Don’t see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation. Interpretation words may include:

• prove, justify—give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth.
• evaluate, respond, assess—state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons (you may want to compare your subject to something else).
• support—give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe).
• synthesize—put two or more things together that haven’t been put together before; don’t just summarize one and then the other, and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together (as opposed to compare and contrast—see above).
• analyze—look closely at the components of something to figure out how it works, what it might mean, or why it is important.
• argue—take a side and defend it (with proof) against the other side.

Plan your answers

Think about your time again. How much planning time you should take depends on how much time you have for each question and how many points each question is worth. Here are some general guidelines: 

• For short-answer definitions and identifications, just take a few seconds. Skip over any you don’t recognize fairly quickly, and come back to them when another question jogs your memory.
• For answers that require a paragraph or two, jot down several important ideas or specific examples that help to focus your thoughts.
• For longer answers, you will need to develop a much more definite strategy of organization. You only have time for one draft, so allow a reasonable amount of time—as much as a quarter of the time you’ve allotted for the question—for making notes, determining a thesis, and developing an outline.
• For questions with several parts (different requests or directions, a sequence of questions), make a list of the parts so that you do not miss or minimize one part. One way to be sure you answer them all is to number them in the question and in your outline.
• You may have to try two or three outlines or clusters before you hit on a workable plan. But be realistic—you want a plan you can develop within the limited time allotted for your answer. Your outline will have to be selective—not everything you know, but what you know that you can state clearly and keep to the point in the time available.

Again, focus on what you do know about the question, not on what you don’t.

Writing your answers

As with planning, your strategy for writing depends on the length of your answer:

• For short identifications and definitions, it is usually best to start with a general identifying statement and then move on to describe specific applications or explanations. Two sentences will almost always suffice, but make sure they are complete sentences. Find out whether the instructor wants definition alone, or definition and significance. Why is the identification term or object important?
• For longer answers, begin by stating your forecasting statement or thesis clearly and explicitly. Strive for focus, simplicity, and clarity. In stating your point and developing your answers, you may want to use important course vocabulary words from the question. For example, if the question is, “How does wisteria function as a representation of memory in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom?” you may want to use the words wisteria, representation, memory, and Faulkner) in your thesis statement and answer. Use these important words or concepts throughout the answer.
• If you have devised a promising outline for your answer, then you will be able to forecast your overall plan and its subpoints in your opening sentence. Forecasting impresses readers and has the very practical advantage of making your answer easier to read. Also, if you don’t finish writing, it tells your reader what you would have said if you had finished (and may get you partial points).
• You might want to use briefer paragraphs than you ordinarily do and signal clear relations between paragraphs with transition phrases or sentences.
• As you move ahead with the writing, you may think of new subpoints or ideas to include in the essay. Stop briefly to make a note of these on your original outline. If they are most appropriately inserted in a section you’ve already written, write them neatly in the margin, at the top of the page, or on the last page, with arrows or marks to alert the reader to where they fit in your answer. Be as neat and clear as possible.
• Don’t pad your answer with irrelevancies and repetitions just to fill up space. Within the time available, write a comprehensive, specific answer.
• Watch the clock carefully to ensure that you do not spend too much time on one answer. You must be realistic about the time constraints of an essay exam. If you write one dazzling answer on an exam with three equally-weighted required questions, you earn only 33 points—not enough to pass at most colleges. This may seem unfair, but keep in mind that instructors plan exams to be reasonably comprehensive. They want you to write about the course materials in two or three or more ways, not just one way. Hint: if you finish a half-hour essay in 10 minutes, you may need to develop some of your ideas more fully.
• If you run out of time when you are writing an answer, jot down the remaining main ideas from your outline, just to show that you know the material and with more time could have continued your exposition.
• Double-space to leave room for additions, and strike through errors or changes with one straight line (avoid erasing or scribbling over). Keep things as clean as possible. You never know what will earn you partial credit.
• Write legibly and proofread. Remember that your instructor will likely be reading a large pile of exams. The more difficult they are to read, the more exasperated the instructor might become. Your instructor also cannot give you credit for what they cannot understand. A few minutes of careful proofreading can improve your grade.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind in writing essay exams is that you have a limited amount of time and space in which to get across the knowledge you have acquired and your ability to use it. Essay exams are not the place to be subtle or vague. It’s okay to have an obvious structure, even the five-paragraph essay format you may have been taught in high school. Introduce your main idea, have several paragraphs of support—each with a single point defended by specific examples, and conclude with a restatement of your main point and its significance.

Some physiological tips

Just think—we expect athletes to practice constantly and use everything in their abilities and situations in order to achieve success. Yet, somehow many students are convinced that one day’s worth of studying, no sleep, and some well-placed compliments (“Gee, Dr. So-and-so, I really enjoyed your last lecture”) are good preparation for a test. Essay exams are like any other testing situation in life: you’ll do best if you are prepared for what is expected of you, have practiced doing it before, and have arrived in the best shape to do it. You may not want to believe this, but it’s true: a good night’s sleep and a relaxed mind and body can do as much or more for you as any last-minute cram session. Colleges abound with tales of woe about students who slept through exams because they stayed up all night, wrote an essay on the wrong topic, forgot everything they studied, or freaked out in the exam and hyperventilated. If you are rested, breathing normally, and have brought along some healthy, energy-boosting snacks that you can eat or drink quietly, you are in a much better position to do a good job on the test. You aren’t going to write a good essay on something you figured out at 4 a.m. that morning. If you prepare yourself well throughout the semester, you don’t risk your whole grade on an overloaded, undernourished brain.

If for some reason you get yourself into this situation, take a minute every once in a while during the test to breathe deeply, stretch, and clear your brain. You need to be especially aware of the likelihood of errors, so check your essays thoroughly before you hand them in to make sure they answer the right questions and don’t have big oversights or mistakes (like saying “Hitler” when you really mean “Churchill”).

If you tend to go blank during exams, try studying in the same classroom in which the test will be given. Some research suggests that people attach ideas to their surroundings, so it might jog your memory to see the same things you were looking at while you studied.

Try good luck charms. Bring in something you associate with success or the support of your loved ones, and use it as a psychological boost.

Take all of the time you’ve been allotted. Reread, rework, and rethink your answers if you have extra time at the end, rather than giving up and handing the exam in the minute you’ve written your last sentence. Use every advantage you are given.

Remember that instructors do not want to see you trip up—they want to see you do well. With this in mind, try to relax and just do the best you can. The more you panic, the more mistakes you are liable to make. Put the test in perspective: will you die from a poor performance? Will you lose all of your friends? Will your entire future be destroyed? Remember: it’s just a test.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Axelrod, Rise B., and Charles R. Cooper. 2016. The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing , 11th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Fowler, Ramsay H., and Jane E. Aaron. 2016. The Little, Brown Handbook , 13th ed. Boston: Pearson.

Gefvert, Constance J. 1988. The Confident Writer: A Norton Handbook , 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Kirszner, Laurie G. 1988. Writing: A College Rhetoric , 2nd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Woodman, Leonara, and Thomas P. Adler. 1988. The Writer’s Choices , 2nd ed. Northbrook, Illinois: Scott Foresman.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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The Ultimate Essay Test Guide: Achieve Top Grades With Ease

An essay test, a fundamental tool in academic assessment, measures a student's ability to express, argue, and structure their thoughts on a given subject through written words. This test format delves deeper into a student's critical thinking and writing skills unlike other conventional exam types.

What is an Essay Test?

An essay test is a type of assessment in which a student is prompted to respond to a question or a series of questions by writing an essay.

This form of test isn’t merely about checking a student’s recall or memorization skills , but more about gauging their ability to comprehend a subject, synthesize information, and articulate their understanding effectively.

Types of Essay Tests

Essay tests can be broadly classified into two categories: Restricted Response and Extended Response .

• Restricted Response tests focus on limited aspects, requiring students to provide short, concise answers.
• Extended Response tests demand more comprehensive answers, allowing students to showcase their creativity and analytical skills.

Advantages and Limitations of an Essay Test

Essay tests offer numerous benefits but also have certain limitations. The advantages of an essay test are :

• They allow teachers to evaluate students’ abilities to organize, synthesize, and interpret information.
• They help in developing critical thinking and writing skills among students.
• They provide an opportunity for students to exhibit their knowledge and understanding of a subject in a broader context.

And the limitations of an essay test are :

• They are time-consuming to both take and grade.
• They are subject to scoring inconsistencies due to potential subjective bias.
• They may cause the students who struggle with written expression may face difficulties, and these tests may not accurately reflect the full spectrum of a student’s knowledge or understanding.

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Understanding the Structure of an Essay Test

Essay tests involve a defined structure to ensure organized, coherent, and comprehensive expression of thoughts. Adhering to a specific structure can enhance your ability to answer essay questions effectively .

The 7 Steps of an Essay

Writing an essay test typically involves seven steps :

• Understanding the question
• Brainstorming ideas
• Creating an outline
• Crafting a thesis statement
• Writing the essay body
• Formulating the conclusion
• Revising and editing for clarity and conciseness

The First Sentence in an Essay

The initial sentence of an essay, often termed a hook , plays a crucial role.

It aims to grab the reader’s attention and provoke interest in the essay topic. It should be engaging, and relevant, and set the tone for the rest of the essay .

The 5-Paragraph Essay Format

The 5-paragraph essay format is commonly used in essay tests, providing a clear and organized approach for students to articulate their ideas. In this format, the introduction and the conclusion include 1 paragraph while the body of the essay includes 3 .

• Introduction : The introduction sets the stage, providing a brief overview of the topic and presenting the thesis statement – the central argument or point.
• Body : The body of the essay contains three paragraphs, each presenting a separate point that supports the thesis statement. Detailed explanations, evidence, and examples are included here to substantiate the points.
• Conclusion : The conclusion reiterates the thesis statement and summarizes the main points. It provides a final perspective on the topic, drawing the essay to a close.

How to Prepare for an Essay Test?

Preparing for an essay test demands a structured approach to ensure thorough understanding and effective response. Here are some strategies to make this task more manageable:

#1 Familiarize Yourself with the Terminology Used

Knowledge of key terminologies is essential. Understand the meaning of directives such as “describe”, “compare”, “contrast”, or “analyze”. Each term guides you on what is expected in your essay and helps you to answer the question accurately.

To make it easier, you can take advantage of AI technologies. While preparing for your exam, use similar essay questions as prompts and see how AI understands and evaluates the questions. If you are unfamiliar with AI, you can check out The Best Chat GPT Prompts For Essay Writing .

#2 Review and Revise Past Essays

Take advantage of past essays or essay prompts to review and revise your writing . Analyze your strengths and areas for improvement, paying attention to grammar , structure , and clarity . This process helps you refine your writing skills and identify potential pitfalls to avoid in future tests.

#3 Practice Timed Writing

Simulate test conditions by practicing timed writing . Set a specific time limit for each essay question and strive to complete it within that timeframe. This exercise builds your ability to think and write quickly , improving your efficiency during the actual test.

#4 Utilize Mnemonic Techniques

To aid in memorization and recall of key concepts or arguments, employ mnemonic techniques . These memory aids, such as acronyms, visualization, or association techniques, can help you retain important information and retrieve it during the test. Practice using mnemonics to reinforce your understanding of critical points.

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Strategies to Pass an Essay Test

Passing an essay test goes beyond understanding the topic; it also requires strategic planning and execution . Below are key strategies that can enhance your performance in an essay test.

• Read the exam paper thoroughly before diving into writing : read the entire exam paper thoroughly. Understand each question’s requirement and make a mental note of the points to be included in each response. This step will help in ensuring that no aspect of the question is overlooked.
• Answer in the First Sentence and Use the Language of the Question : Begin your essay by clearly stating your answer in the first sentence. Use the language of the question to show you are directly addressing the task. This approach ensures that your main argument is understood right from the start.
• Structure Your Essay : Adopt a logical essay structure , typically comprising an introduction, body, and conclusion. This helps in organizing your thoughts, making your argument clearer, and enhancing the readability of your essay.
• Answer in Point Form When Running Out of Time : If time is running short, present your answer in point form. This approach allows you to cover more points quickly, ensuring you don’t leave any questions unanswered.
• Write as Legibly as Possible : Your writing should be clear and easy to read. Illegible handwriting could lead to misunderstandings and may negatively impact your grades.
• Number Your Answers : Ensure your answers are correctly numbered. This helps in aligning your responses with the respective questions, making it easier for the examiner to assess your work, and reducing chances of confusion or error
• Time Yourself on Each Question : Time management is crucial in an essay test. Allocate a specific amount of time to each question, taking into account the marks they carry. Ensure you leave ample time for revising and editing your responses. Practicing this strategy can prevent last-minute rushes and result in a more polished essay.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Essay Tests

How do you answer an essay question, when taking an essay test what is the first step, what type of test is an essay test, what is the first sentence in an essay, what are the six elements of an essay.

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Objective tests (short-answer and multiple choice questions), using objective tests to assess learning, introduction.

Objective tests are questions whose answers are either correct or incorrect. They tend to be better at testing 'low order' thinking skills, such as memory, basic comprehension and perhaps application (of numerical procedures for example) and are often (though not necessarily always) best used for diagnostic assessment. However, this still affords a great variety of both textual and numerical question types including, but not limited to: calculations and mathematical derivations, mcqs, fill-in-the-blanks questions and short essay (short answer) questions.

LSE (2019).

In brief, objectives tests are written tests that require the learner to select the correct answer from among one or more of options or complete statements or perform relatively simple calculations.

What can objective tests assess?

Objective tests are useful to check that learners are coming to terms with the basics of the subject in order that they have a firm foundation and knowledge. They are useful because:

• can test a wide sample of the curriculum in a short time
• can be marked easily; technology can assist with this
• less reliance on language skills of the students
• useful for diagnostic purposes: gaps and muddled ideas can be resolved.

The drawbacks are:

• students can guess rather than know
• the random nature of the questions does not help build mental maps and networks
• writing good questions is not easy
• they tend to focus on lower-order processes: recall rather than judge, explain rather than differentiate.

Short-answer

Short answer questions (SAQs) tend to be open-ended questions (in contrast to MCQ) and are designed to elicit a direct response from students. SAQs can be used to check knowledge and understanding, support engagement with academic literature or a particular case study and to encourage a progressive form of learning. They can be used in both formative and summative assessment. SAQs may take a range of different forms such as short descriptive or qualitative single sentence answers, diagrams or graphs with explanations, filling in missing words in a sentence, list of answers. As the name suggests, the answer is usually short. Gordon (2015, p.39)

Depending on the type of question, marking may simply involve checking against a list of correct answers. Alternatively a set of criteria may be used based:

• factual knowledge about a topic: have the questions been answered correctly?
• numerical answers: will marks be given on the process as well as the product answer?
• writing style: importance of language, structure, accuracy of grammar and spelling?

How to design good questions:

• express the questions in clear language
• ensure there is only one correct answer per question
• state how the question should be answered
• direct questions are better than the sentence completion
• for numerical questions be clear about marks for process as well as product and whether units are part of the answer
• be prepared to accept other answers; some of which you may not have predicted.

Multiple choice questions (MCQ)

The Centre for Teaching Excellence (no date) provides useful advice for designing questions including illustrative examples. Those guidelines are paraphrased and enhanced here for convenience.

Definition: A multiple-choice question is composed of three parts: a stem [that identifies the question or problem] and a set of possible answers that contains a key [that is the best answer to the question] and a number of distractors [that are plausible but incorrect answers to the question].

Students may perceive MCQs as requiring memorisation rather than more analytical engagement with material. If the aim is to encourage a more nuanced understanding of the course content, questions should be designed that require analysis. For example, students could be presented with a case study followed by MCQs which ask them to make judgements about aspects of the brief or to consider the application of certain techniques or theories to a scenario.

The selection of the best answer can be focused on higher-order thinking and require application of course principles, analysis of a problem, or evaluation of alternatives, thus testing students’ ability to do such thinking. Designing alternatives that require a high level of discrimination can also contribute to multiple choice items that test higher-order thinking.

When planning to write questions:

General strategies

• multiple-choice question tests are challenging and time-consuming to create; write a few questions, after a lecture when the course material is still fresh in your mind
• instruct students to select the best answer rather than the correct answer ; by doing this, you acknowledge the fact that the distractors may have an element of truth to them
• use familiar language; students are likely to dismiss distractors with unfamiliar terms as incorrect
• avoid giving verbal association clues from the stem in the key. If the key uses words that are very similar to words found in the stem, students are more likely to pick it as the correct answer
• avoid trick questions. Questions should be designed so that students who know the material can find the correct answer
• avoid negative wording.

Designing stems

• ask yourself if the students would be able to answer the question without looking at the options. If so, it is a good stem
• put all relevant material in the stem
• eliminate excessive wording and irrelevant information from the stem

Designing answers

• limit the number of answers; between three and five is good
• make sure there is only one best answer
• make the distractors appealing and plausible
• make the choices grammatically consistent with the stem
• randomly distribute the correct response.

There are a number of packages that can analyse the results from MCQ tests for reliability and validity. Using the questions for formative purposes can generate the data needed and so pilot questions prior to their use for summative tests. In addition to asking student to give an answer we can also ask for their confidence rating - how sure they are about the answer they are giving. This not only reduces guessing, but also provides feedback to the learner about the extent of their comprehension / understanding.

Using online packages to administer the test allows instant feedback. Once a student has selected an answer they can be told if they are correct or not and be given an explanation of their mistake. Some of these packages select questions on the basis of previous results rather than randomly, which allow a check on whether the learner is gaining from the feedback provided [adaptive testing].

Diversity & inclusion

There is some evidence that males perform better than females in MCQ examinations as they are more willing to guess. Using MCQs for formative rather than summative purposes resolves this. Using short answer questions reduces reliance on language and so is more inclusive for those working in a second language.

Academic integrity

If used for summative purposes one needs to maintain the integrity of the question banks by not allowing copies out of examination room.

When used online it is important to have a large question bank to enable random generation of tests. (Click here for further guidance on academic integrity .)

When used outside of in-person exam conditions assessment may become less secure, as online working could facilitate collusion, or contract cheating, or the use of AI. Randomly generated questions (with different questions or questions in a different order) might mitigate against collusion.

Student and staff experience

Short answer.

Students: are often more familiar with the practice and feel less anxious than many other assessment methods.

Staff: short answer questions are relatively fast to mark and can be marked by different assessors, as long as the questions are set in such a way that all answers can be considered by the assessors. AI can support feedback generation.

They are also relatively easy to set.

Multiple choice questions

Students: good to enable self-assessment, particularly online e when the feedback is instant

Staff: are quick to mark, and be grouped into re-usable questions banks and efficient approach to testing large numbers of students.

Tests lower levels of learning and may encourage surface approaches to learning. Rather like mcqs, to make this approach test higher levels it is the structure of the questions that becomes more complex rather than the content of the question itself.

If short answer questions are to be used in summative assessment they tend to be used alongside longer essays and other longer forms of assessment and thus time management is crucial.

It is very important to be very clear about the type of answers that you expect because these are open-ended and students are free to answer any way they choose; short-answer questions can lead to long answers if you are not careful.

It is challenging to write questions that test higher order learning; the question structure tends to become more complex rather more than the content being tested (see Question Pro in Useful resources below). Students need practice before taking a summative mcq examination so that they are being tested on their knowledge of the material and not on their understanding of the question type.

Taking full advantage of the feedback may be more time consuming for students than actually answering questions; but this is one of their strengths.

Multiple choice question writing is expensive in terms of time, but once a good item bank has been established then the use of the questions, and their marking, is of low demand in terms of time.

Short answer questions are relatively fast to mark and can be marked by different assessors, as long as the questions are set in such a way that all alternative answers can be considered by the assessors.

Useful resources

Multiple Choice

Question Pro: Multiple choice questions.

https://www.questionpro.com/article/multiple-choice-questions.html

Moodle Docs

https://docs.moodle.org/37/en/Multiple_Choice_question_type

Vanderbilt University, Center for Teaching. Writing Good Multiple Choice Test Questions

https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/writing-good-multiple-choice-test-questions/Ce

Short Answer

Open University: Types of assignment: Short answer questions

https://help.open.ac.uk/short-answer-questions

Moodle docs: short-answer question types

https://docs.moodle.org/37/en/Short-Answer_question_type

Annotated bibliography

Class participation

Concept maps

Essay variants: essays only with more focus

• briefing / policy papers
• research proposals
• articles and reviews
• essay plans

Film production

Laboratory notebooks and reports

Objective tests

• short-answer
• multiple choice questions

Oral presentations

Patchwork assessment

Creative / artistic performance

• learning logs
• learning blogs

Simulations

Work-based assessment

Reference list

• Educational Assessment

Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Types of Test Questions

• October 23, 2018
• Maryellen Weimer, PhD

It’s good to regularly review the advantages and disadvantages of the most commonly used test questions and the test banks that now frequently provide them.

Multiple-choice questions

• Quick and easy to score, by hand or electronically
• Can be written so that they test a wide range of higher-order thinking skills
• Can cover lots of content areas on a single exam and still be answered in a class period

Disadvantages

• Often test literacy skills: “if the student reads the question carefully, the answer is easy to recognize even if the student knows little about the subject” (p. 194)
• Provide unprepared students the opportunity to guess, and with guesses that are right, they get credit for things they don’t know
• Expose students to misinformation that can influence subsequent thinking about the content
• Take time and skill to construct (especially good questions)

True-false questions

• Quick and easy to score
• Considered to be “one of the most unreliable forms of assessment” (p. 195)
• Often written so that most of the statement is true save one small, often trivial bit of information that then makes the whole statement untrue
• Encourage guessing, and reward for correct guesses

Short-answer questions

• Quick and easy to grade
• Quick and easy to write
• Encourage students to memorize terms and details, so that their understanding of the content remains superficial

Essay questions

• Offer students an opportunity to demonstrate knowledge, skills, and abilities in a variety of ways
• Can be used to develop student writing skills, particularly the ability to formulate arguments supported with reasoning and evidence
• Require extensive time to grade
• Encourage use of subjective criteria when assessing answers
• If used in class, necessitate quick composition without time for planning or revision, which can result in poor-quality writing

Questions provided by test banks

• Save instructors the time and energy involved in writing test questions
• Use the terms and methods that are used in the book
• Rarely involve analysis, synthesis, application, or evaluation (cross-discipline research documents that approximately 85 percent of the questions in test banks test recall)
• Limit the scope of the exam to text content; if used extensively, may lead students to conclude that the material covered in class is unimportant and irrelevant

We tend to think that these are the only test question options, but there are some interesting variations. The article that promoted this review proposes one: Start with a question, and revise it until it can be answered with one word or a short phrase. Do not list any answer options for that single question, but attach to the exam an alphabetized list of answers. Students select answers from that list. Some of the answers provided may be used more than once, some may not be used, and there are more answers listed than questions. It’s a ratcheted-up version of matching. The approach makes the test more challenging and decreases the chance of getting an answer correct by guessing.

Remember, students do need to be introduced to any new or altered question format before they encounter it on an exam.

Editor’s note: The list of advantages and disadvantages comes in part from the article referenced here. It also cites research evidence relevant to some of these advantages and disadvantages.

Reference: McAllister, D., and Guidice, R.M. (2012). This is only a test: A machine-graded improvement to the multiple-choice and true-false examination. Teaching in Higher Education, 17 (2), 193-207.

Reprinted from The Teaching Professor, 28.3 (2014): 8. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved.

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• Essay Exams

Essay exams provide opportunities to evaluate students’ reasoning skills such as the ability to compare and contrast concepts, justify a position on a topic, interpret cases from the perspective of different theories or models, evaluate a claim or assertion with evidence, design an experiment, and other higher level cognitive skills. They can reveal if students understand the theory behind course material or how different concepts and theories relate to each other. 

+ Advantages and Challenges of essay exams

Advantages:

• Can be used to measure higher order cognitive skills
• Takes relatively less time to write questions
• Difficult for respondents to get correct answers by guessing

Challenges:

• Can be time consuming to administer and to score
• Can be challenging to identify measurable, reliable criteria for assessing student responses
• Limited range of content can be sampled during any one testing period
• Timed exams in general add stress unrelated to a student's mastery of the material

+ Creating an essay exam

• Limit the use of essay questions to learning aims that require learners to share their thinking processes, connect and analyze information, and communicate their understanding for a specific purpose. 
• Write each item so that students clearly understand the specific task and what deliverables are required for a complete answer (e.g. diagram, amount of evidence, number of examples).
• Indicate the relative amount of time and effort students should spend on each essay item, for example “2 – 3 sentences should suffice for this question”.
• Consider using several narrowly focused items rather than one broad item.
• Consider offering students choice among essay questions, while ensuring that all learning aims are assessed.

When designing essay exams, consider the reasoning skills you want to assess in your students. The following table lists different skills to measure with example prompts to guide assessment questions. 

+ Preparing students for an essay exam

Adapted from Piontek, 2008

Prior to the essay exam

• Administer a formative assessment that asks students to do a brief write on a question similar to one you will use on an exam and provide them with feedback on their responses.
• Provide students with examples of essay responses that do and do not meet your criteria and standards. 
• Provide students with the learning aims they will be responsible for mastering to help them focus their preparation appropriately.
• Have students apply the scoring rubric to sample essay responses and provide them with feedback on their work.

Resource video : 2-minute video description of a formative assessment that helps prepare students for an essay exam. 

+ Administering an essay exam

• Provide adequate time for students to take the assessment. A strategy some instructors use is to time themselves answering the exam questions completely and then multiply that time by 3-4.
• Endeavor to create a distraction-free environment.
• Review the suggestions for informal accommodations for multilingual learners , which may be helpful in setting up an essay exam for all learners.

+ Grading an essay exam

To ensure essays are graded fairly and without bias:

• Outline what constitutes an acceptable answer (criteria for knowledge and skills).
• Select an appropriate scoring method based on the criteria.
• Clarify the role of writing mechanics and other factors independent of the learning aims being measured.
• Share with students ahead of time.
• Use a systematic process for scoring each essay item.  For instance, score all responses to a single question in one setting.
• Anonymize student work (if possible) to ensure fairer and more objective feedback. For example students could use their student ID number in place of their name.

+ References & Resources

• For more information on setting criteria, preparing students, and grading essay exams read:  Boye, A. (2019) Writing Better Essay Exams , IDEA paper #76.
• For more detailed descriptions of how to develop and score essay exams read: Piontek, M.E. (2008). Best Practices for Designing and Grading Exams, CRLT Occasional Paper # 24.

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Essay tests are useful for teachers when they want students to select, organize, analyze, synthesize, and/or evaluate information. In other words, they rely on the upper levels of Bloom's Taxonomy . There are two types of essay questions: restricted and extended response.

• Restricted Response - These essay questions limit what the student will discuss in the essay based on the wording of the question. For example, "State the main differences between John Adams' and Thomas Jefferson's beliefs about federalism," is a restricted response. What the student is to write about has been expressed to them within the question.
• Extended Response - These allow students to select what they wish to include in order to answer the question. For example, "In Of Mice and Men , was George's killing of Lennie justified? Explain your answer." The student is given the overall topic, but they are free to use their own judgment and integrate outside information to help support their opinion.

Student Skills Required for Essay Tests

Before expecting students to perform well on either type of essay question, we must make sure that they have the required skills to excel. Following are four skills that students should have learned and practiced before taking essay exams:

• The ability to select appropriate material from the information learned in order to best answer the question.
• The ability to organize that material in an effective manner.
• The ability to show how ideas relate and interact in a specific context.
• The ability to write effectively in both sentences and paragraphs.

Constructing an Effective Essay Question

Following are a few tips to help in the construction of effective essay questions:

• Begin with the lesson objectives in mind. Make sure to know what you wish the student to show by answering the essay question.
• Decide if your goal requires a restricted or extended response. In general, if you wish to see if the student can synthesize and organize the information that they learned, then restricted response is the way to go. However, if you wish them to judge or evaluate something using the information taught during class, then you will want to use the extended response.
• If you are including more than one essay, be cognizant of time constraints. You do not want to punish students because they ran out of time on the test.
• Write the question in a novel or interesting manner to help motivate the student.
• State the number of points that the essay is worth. You can also provide them with a time guideline to help them as they work through the exam.
• If your essay item is part of a larger objective test, make sure that it is the last item on the exam.

Scoring the Essay Item

One of the downfalls of essay tests is that they lack in reliability. Even when teachers grade essays with a well-constructed rubric, subjective decisions are made. Therefore, it is important to try and be as reliable as possible when scoring your essay items. Here are a few tips to help improve reliability in grading:

• Determine whether you will use a holistic or analytic scoring system before you write your rubric . With the holistic grading system, you evaluate the answer as a whole, rating papers against each other. With the analytic system, you list specific pieces of information and award points for their inclusion.
• Prepare the essay rubric in advance. Determine what you are looking for and how many points you will be assigning for each aspect of the question.
• Avoid looking at names. Some teachers have students put numbers on their essays to try and help with this.
• Score one item at a time. This helps ensure that you use the same thinking and standards for all students.
• Avoid interruptions when scoring a specific question. Again, consistency will be increased if you grade the same item on all the papers in one sitting.
• If an important decision like an award or scholarship is based on the score for the essay, obtain two or more independent readers.
• Beware of negative influences that can affect essay scoring. These include handwriting and writing style bias, the length of the response, and the inclusion of irrelevant material.
• Review papers that are on the borderline a second time before assigning a final grade.
• How to Study Using the Basketball Review Game
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Improving Your Test Questions

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For questions or information:

• Choosing between Objective and Subjective Test Items

Multiple-Choice Test Items

True-false test items, matching test items, completion test items, essay test items, problem solving test items, performance test items.

• Two Methods for Assessing Test Item Quality
• Assistance Offered by The Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITL)
• References for Further Reading

I. Choosing Between Objective and Subjective Test Items

There are two general categories of test items: (1) objective items which require students to select the correct response from several alternatives or to supply a word or short phrase to answer a question or complete a statement; and (2) subjective or essay items which permit the student to organize and present an original answer. Objective items include multiple-choice, true-false, matching and completion, while subjective items include short-answer essay, extended-response essay, problem solving and performance test items. For some instructional purposes one or the other item types may prove more efficient and appropriate. To begin out discussion of the relative merits of each type of test item, test your knowledge of these two item types by answering the following questions.

Quiz Answers

1 Sax, G., & Collet, L. S. (1968). An empirical comparison of the effects of recall and multiple-choice tests on student achievement. J ournal of Educational Measurement, 5 (2), 169–173. doi:10.1111/j.1745-3984.1968.tb00622.x

Paterson, D. G. (1926). Do new and old type examinations measure different mental functions? School and Society, 24 , 246–248.

When to Use Essay or Objective Tests

Essay tests are especially appropriate when:

• the group to be tested is small and the test is not to be reused.
• you wish to encourage and reward the development of student skill in writing.
• you are more interested in exploring the student's attitudes than in measuring his/her achievement.
• you are more confident of your ability as a critical and fair reader than as an imaginative writer of good objective test items.

Objective tests are especially appropriate when:

• the group to be tested is large and the test may be reused.
• highly reliable test scores must be obtained as efficiently as possible.
• impartiality of evaluation, absolute fairness, and freedom from possible test scoring influences (e.g., fatigue, lack of anonymity) are essential.
• you are more confident of your ability to express objective test items clearly than of your ability to judge essay test answers correctly.
• there is more pressure for speedy reporting of scores than for speedy test preparation.

Either essay or objective tests can be used to:

• measure almost any important educational achievement a written test can measure.
• test understanding and ability to apply principles.
• test ability to think critically.
• test ability to solve problems.
• test ability to select relevant facts and principles and to integrate them toward the solution of complex problems. 

In addition to the preceding suggestions, it is important to realize that certain item types are  better suited  than others for measuring particular learning objectives. For example, learning objectives requiring the student  to demonstrate  or  to show , may be better measured by performance test items, whereas objectives requiring the student  to explain  or  to describe  may be better measured by essay test items. The matching of learning objective expectations with certain item types can help you select an appropriate kind of test item for your classroom exam as well as provide a higher degree of test validity (i.e., testing what is supposed to be tested). To further illustrate, several sample learning objectives and appropriate test items are provided on the following page.

After you have decided to use either an objective, essay or both objective and essay exam, the next step is to select the kind(s) of objective or essay item that you wish to include on the exam. To help you make such a choice, the different kinds of objective and essay items are presented in the following section. The various kinds of items are briefly described and compared to one another in terms of their advantages and limitations for use. Also presented is a set of general suggestions for the construction of each item variation. 

II. Suggestions for Using and Writing Test Items

The multiple-choice item consists of two parts: (a) the stem, which identifies the question or problem and (b) the response alternatives. Students are asked to select the one alternative that best completes the statement or answers the question. For example:

Sample Multiple-Choice Item

*correct response

Advantages in Using Multiple-Choice Items

Multiple-choice items can provide...

• versatility in measuring all levels of cognitive ability.
• highly reliable test scores.
• scoring efficiency and accuracy.
• objective measurement of student achievement or ability.
• a wide sampling of content or objectives.
• a reduced guessing factor when compared to true-false items.
• different response alternatives which can provide diagnostic feedback.

Limitations in Using Multiple-Choice Items

Multiple-choice items...

• are difficult and time consuming to construct.
• lead an instructor to favor simple recall of facts.
• place a high degree of dependence on the student's reading ability and instructor's writing ability.

Suggestions For Writing Multiple-Choice Test Items

4. Include in the stem any word(s) that might otherwise be repeated in each alternative.

Undesirable:

5. Use negatively stated stems sparingly. When used, underline and/or capitalize the negative word. Undesirable: Desirable: Item Alternatives 6. Make all alternatives plausible and attractive to the less knowledgeable or skillful student. Undesirable Desirable 7. Make the alternatives grammatically parallel with each other, and consistent with the stem. Undesirable: 8. Make the alternatives mutually exclusive. Undesirable: The daily minimum required amount of milk that a 10 year old child should drink is 9. When possible, present alternatives in some logical order (e.g., chronological, most to least, alphabetical). Undesirable Desirable 10. Be sure there is only one correct or best response to the item. Undesirable: 11. Make alternatives approximately equal in length. Undesirable: 12. Avoid irrelevant clues such as grammatical structure, well known verbal associations or connections between stem and answer. Undesirable: (grammatical clue) of water behind the dam. 13. Use at least four alternatives for each item to lower the probability of getting the item correct by guessing. 14. Randomly distribute the correct response among the alternative positions throughout the test having approximately the same proportion of alternatives a, b, c, d and e as the correct response. 15. Use the alternatives "none of the above" and "all of the above" sparingly. When used, such alternatives should occasionally be used as the correct response. A true-false item can be written in one of three forms: simple, complex, or compound. Answers can consist of only two choices (simple), more than two choices (complex), or two choices plus a conditional completion response (compound). An example of each type of true-false item follows: Sample True-False Item: Simple The acquisition of morality is a developmental process. True False Sample True-False Item: Complex Sample true-false item: compound. The acquisition of morality is a developmental process. True False     Advantages In Using True-False Items True-False items can provide... the widest sampling of content or objectives per unit of testing time. an objective measurement of student achievement or ability. Limitations In Using True-False Items True-false items... incorporate an extremely high guessing factor. For simple true-false items, each student has a 50/50 chance of correctly answering the item without any knowledge of the item's content. can often lead an instructor to write ambiguous statements due to the difficulty of writing statements which are unequivocally true or false. do not discriminate between students of varying ability as well as other item types. can often include more irrelevant clues than do other item types. can often lead an instructor to favor testing of trivial knowledge. Suggestions For Writing True-False Test Items 1.  Base true-false items upon statements that are absolutely true or false, without qualifications or exceptions. Undesirable: Desirable: 2.  Express the item statement as simply and as clearly as possible. Undesirable: Desirable: 3.  Express a single idea in each test item. Undesirable: Desirable: 4.  Include enough background information and qualifications so that the ability to respond correctly to the item does not depend on some special, uncommon knowledge. Undesirable: Desirable: 5.  Avoid lifting statements from the text, lecture or other materials so that memory alone will not permit a correct answer. Undesirable: Desirable: 6.  Avoid using negatively stated item statements. Undesirable: Desirable: 7.  Avoid the use of unfamiliar vocabulary. Undesirable: Desirable: 8.  Avoid the use of specific determiners which would permit a test-wise but unprepared examinee to respond correctly. Specific determiners refer to sweeping terms like "all," "always," "none," "never," "impossible," "inevitable," etc. Statements including such terms are likely to be false. On the other hand, statements using qualifying determiners such as "usually," "sometimes," "often," etc., are likely to be true. When statements do require the use of specific determiners, make sure they appear in both true and false items. Undesirable: required to rule on the constitutionality of a law. (T) easier to score than an essay test. (T) Desirable: 180°. (T) other molecule of that compound. (T) used for the metering of electrical energy used in a home. (F) 9.  False items tend to discriminate more highly than true items. Therefore, use more false items than true items (but no more than 15% additional false items). In general, matching items consist of a column of stimuli presented on the left side of the exam page and a column of responses placed on the right side of the page. Students are required to match the response associated with a given stimulus. For example: Sample Matching Test Item Advantages In Using Matching Items Matching items... require short periods of reading and response time, allowing you to cover more content. provide objective measurement of student achievement or ability. provide highly reliable test scores. provide scoring efficiency and accuracy. Limitations in Using Matching Items have difficulty measuring learning objectives requiring more than simple recall of information. are difficult to construct due to the problem of selecting a common set of stimuli and responses. Suggestions for Writing Matching Test Items 1.  Include directions which clearly state the basis for matching the stimuli with the responses. Explain whether or not a response can be used more than once and indicate where to write the answer. Undesirable: Desirable: 2.  Use only homogeneous material in matching items. Undesirable: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. a. b. c. d. O e. f. Desirable: 1. 2. 3. 4.  a. SO b. c. d. O e. HCl 3.  Arrange the list of responses in some systematic order if possible (e.g., chronological, alphabetical). Undesirable Desirable 1. 2. 3. 4. a. b. c. d. e. a. b. c. d. e. 4.  Avoid grammatical or other clues to the correct response. Undesirable: 1. 2. 3. 4. Desirable: 5.  Keep matching items brief, limiting the list of stimuli to under 10. 6.  Include more responses than stimuli to help prevent answering through the process of elimination. 7.  When possible, reduce the amount of reading time by including only short phrases or single words in the response list. The completion item requires the student to answer a question or to finish an incomplete statement by filling in a blank with the correct word or phrase. For example, Sample Completion Item According to Freud, personality is made up of three major systems, the _________, the ________ and the ________. Advantages in Using Completion Items Completion items... can provide a wide sampling of content. can efficiently measure lower levels of cognitive ability. can minimize guessing as compared to multiple-choice or true-false items. can usually provide an objective measure of student achievement or ability. Limitations of Using Completion Items are difficult to construct so that the desired response is clearly indicated. are more time consuming to score when compared to multiple-choice or true-false items. are more difficult to score since more than one answer may have to be considered correct if the item was not properly prepared. Suggestions for Writing Completion Test Items 1.  Omit only significant words from the statement. Undesirable: called a nucleus. Desirable: . 2.  Do not omit so many words from the statement that the intended meaning is lost. Undesirable:                                               Desirable:                               3.  Avoid grammatical or other clues to the correct response. Undesirable: decimal system. Desirable: 4.  Be sure there is only one correct response. Undesirable: . Desirable: . 5.  Make the blanks of equal length. Undesirable: and   (Juno)  . Desirable: and     (Juno)     . 6.  When possible, delete words at the end of the statement after the student has been presented a clearly defined problem. Undesirable: . Desirable: is     (122.5)     . 7.  Avoid lifting statements directly from the text, lecture or other sources. 8.  Limit the required response to a single word or phrase. The essay test is probably the most popular of all types of teacher-made tests. In general, a classroom essay test consists of a small number of questions to which the student is expected to demonstrate his/her ability to (a) recall factual knowledge, (b) organize this knowledge and (c) present the knowledge in a logical, integrated answer to the question. An essay test item can be classified as either an extended-response essay item or a short-answer essay item. The latter calls for a more restricted or limited answer in terms of form or scope. An example of each type of essay item follows. Sample Extended-Response Essay Item Explain the difference between the S-R (Stimulus-Response) and the S-O-R (Stimulus-Organism-Response) theories of personality. Include in your answer (a) brief descriptions of both theories, (b) supporters of both theories and (c) research methods used to study each of the two theories. (10 pts.  20 minutes) Sample Short-Answer Essay Item Identify research methods used to study the S-R (Stimulus-Response) and S-O-R (Stimulus-Organism-Response) theories of personality. (5 pts.  10 minutes) Advantages In Using Essay Items Essay items... are easier and less time consuming to construct than are most other item types. provide a means for testing student's ability to compose an answer and present it in a logical manner. can efficiently measure higher order cognitive objectives (e.g., analysis, synthesis, evaluation). Limitations In Using Essay Items cannot measure a large amount of content or objectives. generally provide low test and test scorer reliability. require an extensive amount of instructor's time to read and grade. generally do not provide an objective measure of student achievement or ability (subject to bias on the part of the grader). Suggestions for Writing Essay Test Items 1.  Prepare essay items that elicit the type of behavior you want to measure. Learning Objective: The student will be able to explain how the normal curve serves as a statistical model. Undesirable: Describe a normal curve in terms of: symmetry, modality, kurtosis and skewness. Desirable: Briefly explain how the normal curve serves as a statistical model for estimation and hypothesis testing. 2.  Phrase each item so that the student's task is clearly indicated. Undesirable: Discuss the economic factors which led to the stock market crash of 1929. Desirable: Identify the three major economic conditions which led to the stock market crash of 1929. Discuss briefly each condition in correct chronological sequence and in one paragraph indicate how the three factors were inter-related. 3.  Indicate for each item a point value or weight and an estimated time limit for answering. Undesirable: Compare the writings of Bret Harte and Mark Twain in terms of settings, depth of characterization, and dialogue styles of their main characters. Desirable: Compare the writings of Bret Harte and Mark Twain in terms of settings, depth of characterization, and dialogue styles of their main characters. (10 points 20 minutes) 4.  Ask questions that will elicit responses on which experts could agree that one answer is better than another. 5.  Avoid giving the student a choice among optional items as this greatly reduces the reliability of the test. 6.  It is generally recommended for classroom examinations to administer several short-answer items rather than only one or two extended-response items. Suggestions for Scoring Essay Items ANALYTICAL SCORING: Each answer is compared to an ideal answer and points are assigned for the inclusion of necessary elements. Grades are based on the number of accumulated points either absolutely (i.e., A=10 or more points, B=6-9 pts., etc.) or relatively (A=top 15% scores, B=next 30% of scores, etc.) GLOBAL QUALITY: Each answer is read and assigned a score (e.g., grade, total points) based either on the total quality of the response or on the total quality of the response relative to other student answers. Examples Essay Item and Grading Models "Americans are a mixed-up people with no sense of ethical values. Everyone knows that baseball is far less necessary than food and steel, yet they pay ball players a lot more than farmers and steelworkers." WHY? Use 3-4 sentences to indicate how an economist would explain the above situation. Analytical Scoring Global Quality Assign scores or grades on the overall quality of the written response as compared to an ideal answer. Or, compare the overall quality of a response to other student responses by sorting the papers into three stacks: Read and sort each stack again divide into three more stacks In total, nine discriminations can be used to assign test grades in this manner. The number of stacks or discriminations can vary to meet your needs. Try not to allow factors which are irrelevant to the learning outcomes being measured affect your grading (i.e., handwriting, spelling, neatness). Read and grade all class answers to one item before going on to the next item. Read and grade the answers without looking at the students' names to avoid possible preferential treatment. Occasionally shuffle papers during the reading of answers to help avoid any systematic order effects (i.e., Sally's "B" work always followed Jim's "A" work thus it looked more like "C" work). When possible, ask another instructor to read and grade your students' responses. Another form of a subjective test item is the problem solving or computational exam question. Such items present the student with a problem situation or task and require a demonstration of work procedures and a correct solution, or just a correct solution. This kind of test item is classified as a subjective type of item due to the procedures used to score item responses. Instructors can assign full or partial credit to either correct or incorrect solutions depending on the quality and kind of work procedures presented. An example of a problem solving test item follows. Example Problem Solving Test Item It was calculated that 75 men could complete a strip on a new highway in 70 days. When work was scheduled to commence, it was found necessary to send 25 men on another road project. How many days longer will it take to complete the strip? Show your work for full or partial credit. Advantages In Using Problem Solving Items Problem solving items... minimize guessing by requiring the students to provide an original response rather than to select from several alternatives. are easier to construct than are multiple-choice or matching items. can most appropriately measure learning objectives which focus on the ability to apply skills or knowledge in the solution of problems. can measure an extensive amount of content or objectives. Limitations in Using Problem Solving Items require an extensive amount of instructor time to read and grade. generally do not provide an objective measure of student achievement or ability (subject to bias on the part of the grader when partial credit is given). Suggestions For Writing Problem Solving Test Items 1.  Clearly identify and explain the problem. Undesirable: Desirable: 2.  Provide directions which clearly inform the student of the type of response called for. Undesirable: Desirable: 3.  State in the directions whether or not the student must show his/her work procedures for full or partial credit. Undesirable: Desirable: 4.  Clearly separate item parts and indicate their point values. A man leaves his home and drives to a convention at an average rate of 50 miles per hour. Upon arrival, he finds a telegram advising him to return at once. He catches a plane that takes him back at an average rate of 300 miles per hour. Undesirable: Desirable: 5.  Use figures, conditions and situations which create a realistic problem. Undesirable: Desirable: 6.  Ask questions that elicit responses on which experts could agree that one solution and one or more work procedures are better than others. 7.  Work through each problem before classroom administration to double-check accuracy. A performance test item is designed to assess the ability of a student to perform correctly in a simulated situation (i.e., a situation in which the student will be ultimately expected to apply his/her learning). The concept of simulation is central in performance testing; a performance test will simulate to some degree a real life situation to accomplish the assessment. In theory, a performance test could be constructed for any skill and real life situation. In practice, most performance tests have been developed for the assessment of vocational, managerial, administrative, leadership, communication, interpersonal and physical education skills in various simulated situations. An illustrative example of a performance test item is provided below. Sample Performance Test Item Assume that some of the instructional objectives of an urban planning course include the development of the student's ability to effectively use the principles covered in the course in various "real life" situations common for an urban planning professional. A performance test item could measure this development by presenting the student with a specific situation which represents a "real life" situation. For example, An urban planning board makes a last minute request for the professional to act as consultant and critique a written proposal which is to be considered in a board meeting that very evening. The professional arrives before the meeting and has one hour to analyze the written proposal and prepare his critique. The critique presentation is then made verbally during the board meeting; reactions of members of the board or the audience include requests for explanation of specific points or informed attacks on the positions taken by the professional. The performance test designed to simulate this situation would require that the student to be tested role play the professional's part, while students or faculty act the other roles in the situation. Various aspects of the "professional's" performance would then be observed and rated by several judges with the necessary background. The ratings could then be used both to provide the student with a diagnosis of his/her strengths and weaknesses and to contribute to an overall summary evaluation of the student's abilities. Advantages In Using Performance Test Items Performance test items... can most appropriately measure learning objectives which focus on the ability of the students to apply skills or knowledge in real life situations. usually provide a degree of test validity not possible with standard paper and pencil test items. are useful for measuring learning objectives in the psychomotor domain. Limitations In Using Performance Test Items are difficult and time consuming to construct. are primarily used for testing students individually and not for testing groups. Consequently, they are relatively costly, time consuming, and inconvenient forms of testing. generally do not provide an objective measure of student achievement or ability (subject to bias on the part of the observer/grader). Suggestions For Writing Performance Test Items Prepare items that elicit the type of behavior you want to measure. Clearly identify and explain the simulated situation to the student. Make the simulated situation as "life-like" as possible. Provide directions which clearly inform the students of the type of response called for. When appropriate, clearly state time and activity limitations in the directions. Adequately train the observer(s)/scorer(s) to ensure that they are fair in scoring the appropriate behaviors. III. TWO METHODS FOR ASSESSING TEST ITEM QUALITY This section presents two methods for collecting feedback on the quality of your test items. The two methods include using self-review checklists and student evaluation of test item quality. You can use the information gathered from either method to identify strengths and weaknesses in your item writing.  Checklist for Evaluating Test Items EVALUATE YOUR TEST ITEMS BY CHECKING THE SUGGESTIONS WHICH YOU FEEL YOU HAVE FOLLOWED.   ____  When possible, stated the stem as a direct question rather than as an incomplete statement. ____  Presented a definite, explicit and singular question or problem in the stem. ____  Eliminated excessive verbiage or irrelevant information from the stem. ____  Included in the stem any word(s) that might have otherwise been repeated in each alternative. ____  Used negatively stated stems sparingly. When used, underlined and/or capitalized the negative word(s). ____  Made all alternatives plausible and attractive to the less knowledgeable or skillful student. ____  Made the alternatives grammatically parallel with each other, and consistent with the stem. ____  Made the alternatives mutually exclusive. ____  When possible, presented alternatives in some logical order (e.g., chronologically, most to least). ____  Made sure there was only one correct or best response per item. ____  Made alternatives approximately equal in length. ____  Avoided irrelevant clues such as grammatical structure, well known verbal associations or connections between stem and answer. ____  Used at least four alternatives for each item. ____  Randomly distributed the correct response among the alternative positions throughout the test having approximately the same proportion of alternatives a, b, c, d, and e as the correct response. ____  Used the alternatives "none of the above" and "all of the above" sparingly. When used, such alternatives were occasionally the correct response. ____  Based true-false items upon statements that are absolutely true or false, without qualifications or exceptions. ____  Expressed the item statement as simply and as clearly as possible. ____  Expressed a single idea in each test item. ____  Included enough background information and qualifications so that the ability to respond correctly did not depend on some special, uncommon knowledge. ____  Avoided lifting statements from the text, lecture, or other materials. ____  Avoided using negatively stated item statements. ____  Avoided the use of unfamiliar language. ____  Avoided the use of specific determiners such as "all," "always," "none," "never," etc., and qualifying determiners such as "usually," "sometimes," "often," etc. ____  Used more false items than true items (but not more than 15% additional false items). ____  Included directions which clearly stated the basis for matching the stimuli with the response. ____  Explained whether or not a response could be used more than once and indicated where to write the answer. ____  Used only homogeneous material. ____  When possible, arranged the list of responses in some systematic order (e.g., chronologically, alphabetically). ____  Avoided grammatical or other clues to the correct response. ____  Kept items brief (limited the list of stimuli to under 10). ____  Included more responses than stimuli. ____  When possible, reduced the amount of reading time by including only short phrases or single words in the response list. ____  Omitted only significant words from the statement. ____  Did not omit so many words from the statement that the intended meaning was lost. ____  Avoided grammatical or other clues to the correct response. ____  Included only one correct response per item. ____  Made the blanks of equal length. ____  When possible, deleted the words at the end of the statement after the student was presented with a clearly defined problem. ____  Avoided lifting statements directly from the text, lecture, or other sources. ____  Limited the required response to a single word or phrase. ____  Prepared items that elicited the type of behavior you wanted to measure. ____  Phrased each item so that the student's task was clearly indicated. ____  Indicated for each item a point value or weight and an estimated time limit for answering. ____  Asked questions that elicited responses on which experts could agree that one answer is better than others. ____  Avoided giving the student a choice among optional items. ____  Administered several short-answer items rather than 1 or 2 extended-response items. Grading Essay Test Items ____  Selected an appropriate grading model. ____  Tried not to allow factors which were irrelevant to the learning outcomes being measured to affect your grading (e.g., handwriting, spelling, neatness). ____  Read and graded all class answers to one item before going on to the next item. ____  Read and graded the answers without looking at the student's name to avoid possible preferential treatment. ____  Occasionally shuffled papers during the reading of answers. ____  When possible, asked another instructor to read and grade your students' responses. ____  Clearly identified and explained the problem to the student. ____  Provided directions which clearly informed the student of the type of response called for. ____  Stated in the directions whether or not the student must show work procedures for full or partial credit. ____  Clearly separated item parts and indicated their point values. ____  Used figures, conditions and situations which created a realistic problem. ____  Asked questions that elicited responses on which experts could agree that one solution and one or more work procedures are better than others. ____  Worked through each problem before classroom administration. ____  Prepared items that elicit the type of behavior you wanted to measure. ____  Clearly identified and explained the simulated situation to the student. ____  Made the simulated situation as "life-like" as possible. ____  Provided directions which clearly inform the students of the type of response called for. ____  When appropriate, clearly stated time and activity limitations in the directions. ____  Adequately trained the observer(s)/scorer(s) to ensure that they were fair in scoring the appropriate behaviors. STUDENT EVALUATION OF TEST ITEM QUALITY  Using ices questionnaire items to assess your test item quality . The following set of ICES (Instructor and Course Evaluation System) questionnaire items can be used to assess the quality of your test items. The items are presented with their original ICES catalogue number. You are encouraged to include one or more of the items on the ICES evaluation form in order to collect student opinion of your item writing quality. 102--How would you rate the instructor's examination questions? 116--Did the exams challenge you to do original thinking? Excellent Poor Yes, very challenging No, not challenging 103--How well did examination questions reflect content and emphasis of the course? 118--Were there "trick" or trite questions on tests? Well related Poorly related Lots of them Few if any 114--The exams reflected important points in the reading assignments. 122--How difficult were the examinations? Strongly agree Strongly disagree Too difficult Too easy 119--Were exam questions worded clearly? 123--I found I could score reasonably well on exams by just cramming. Yes, very clear No, very unclear Strongly agree Strongly disagree 115--Were the instructor's test questions thought provoking? 121--How was the length of exams for the time allotted. Definitely yes Definitely no Too long Too short 125--Were exams adequately discussed upon return? 109--Were exams, papers, reports returned with errors explained or personal comments? Yes, adequately No, not enough Almost always Almost never IV. ASSISTANCE OFFERED BY THE CENTER FOR INNOVATION IN TEACHING AND LEARNING (CITL) The information on this page is intended for self-instruction. However, CITL staff members will consult with faculty who wish to analyze and improve their test item writing. The staff can also consult with faculty about other instructional problems. Instructors wishing to acquire CITL assistance can contact [email protected] .  V. REFERENCES FOR FURTHER READING Ebel, R. L. (1965). Measuring educational achievement . Prentice-Hall. Ebel, R. L. (1972). Essentials of educational measurement . Prentice-Hall. Gronlund, N. E. (1976). Measurement and evaluation in teaching (3rd ed.). Macmillan. Mehrens W. A. & Lehmann I. J. (1973). Measurement and evaluation in education and psychology . Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Nelson, C. H. (1970). Measurement and evaluation in the classroom . Macmillan. Payne, D. A. (1974).  The assessment of learning: Cognitive and affective . D.C. Heath & Co. Scannell, D. P., & Tracy D. B. (1975). Testing and measurement in the classroom . Houghton Mifflin. Thorndike, R. L. (1971). Educational measurement (2nd ed.). American Council on Education. Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning 249 Armory Building 505 East Armory Avenue Champaign, IL 61820 217 333-1462 Email: [email protected] Office of the Provost Center for Teaching Writing good multiple choice test questions. Brame, C. (2013) Writing good multiple choice test questions. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/writing-good-multiple-choice-test-questions/. Constructing an Effective Stem Constructing effective alternatives. Additional Guidelines for Multiple Choice Questions Considerations for Writing Multiple Choice Items that Test Higher-order Thinking Additional resources. Multiple choice test questions, also known as items, can be an effective and efficient way to assess learning outcomes. Multiple choice test items have several potential advantages: Reliability: Reliability is defined as the degree to which a test consistently measures a learning outcome. Multiple choice test items are less susceptible to guessing than true/false questions, making them a more reliable means of assessment. The reliability is enhanced when the number of MC items focused on a single learning objective is increased. In addition, the objective scoring associated with multiple choice test items frees them from problems with scorer inconsistency that can plague scoring of essay questions. Validity: Validity is the degree to which a test measures the learning outcomes it purports to measure. Because students can typically answer a multiple choice item much more quickly than an essay question, tests based on multiple choice items can typically focus on a relatively broad representation of course material, thus increasing the validity of the assessment. The key to taking advantage of these strengths, however, is construction of good multiple choice items. A multiple choice item consists of a problem, known as the stem, and a list of suggested solutions, known as alternatives. The alternatives consist of one correct or best alternative, which is the answer, and incorrect or inferior alternatives, known as distractors. 1. The stem should be meaningful by itself and should present a definite problem. A stem that presents a definite problem allows a focus on the learning outcome. A stem that does not present a clear problem, however, may test students’ ability to draw inferences from vague descriptions rather serving as a more direct test of students’ achievement of the learning outcome. 2. The stem should not contain irrelevant material , which can decrease the reliability and the validity of the test scores (Haldyna and Downing 1989). 3. The stem should be negatively stated only when significant learning outcomes require it. Students often have difficulty understanding items with negative phrasing (Rodriguez 1997). If a significant learning outcome requires negative phrasing, such as identification of dangerous laboratory or clinical practices, the negative element should be emphasized with italics or capitalization. 4. The stem should be a question or a partial sentence. A question stem is preferable because it allows the student to focus on answering the question rather than holding the partial sentence in working memory and sequentially completing it with each alternative (Statman 1988). The cognitive load is increased when the stem is constructed with an initial or interior blank, so this construction should be avoided. 1. All alternatives should be plausible. The function of the incorrect alternatives is to serve as distractors,which should be selected by students who did not achieve the learning outcome but ignored by students who did achieve the learning outcome. Alternatives that are implausible don’t serve as functional distractors and thus should not be used. Common student errors provide the best source of distractors. 2. Alternatives should be stated clearly and concisely. Items that are excessively wordy assess students’ reading ability rather than their attainment of the learning objective 3. Alternatives should be mutually exclusive. Alternatives with overlapping content may be considered “trick” items by test-takers, excessive use of which can erode trust and respect for the testing process. 4. Alternatives should be homogenous in content. Alternatives that are heterogeneous in content can provide cues to student about the correct answer. 5. Alternatives should be free from clues about which response is correct. Sophisticated test-takers are alert to inadvertent clues to the correct answer, such differences in grammar, length, formatting, and language choice in the alternatives. It’s therefore important that alternatives have grammar consistent with the stem. are parallel in form. are similar in length. use similar language (e.g., all unlike textbook language or all like textbook language). 6. The alternatives “all of the above” and “none of the above” should not be used. When “all of the above” is used as an answer, test-takers who can identify more than one alternative as correct can select the correct answer even if unsure about other alternative(s). When “none of the above” is used as an alternative, test-takers who can eliminate a single option can thereby eliminate a second option. In either case, students can use partial knowledge to arrive at a correct answer. 7. The alternatives should be presented in a logical order (e.g., alphabetical or numerical) to avoid a bias toward certain positions. 8. The number of alternatives can vary among items as long as all alternatives are plausible. Plausible alternatives serve as functional distractors, which are those chosen by students that have not achieved the objective but ignored by students that have achieved the objective. There is little difference in difficulty, discrimination, and test score reliability among items containing two, three, and four distractors. Additional Guidelines 1. Avoid complex multiple choice items , in which some or all of the alternatives consist of different combinations of options. As with “all of the above” answers, a sophisticated test-taker can use partial knowledge to achieve a correct answer. 2. Keep the specific content of items independent of one another. Savvy test-takers can use information in one question to answer another question, reducing the validity of the test. When writing multiple choice items to test higher-order thinking, design questions that focus on higher levels of cognition as defined by Bloom’s taxonomy . A stem that presents a problem that requires application of course principles, analysis of a problem, or evaluation of alternatives is focused on higher-order thinking and thus tests students’ ability to do such thinking. In constructing multiple choice items to test higher order thinking, it can also be helpful to design problems that require multilogical thinking, where multilogical thinking is defined as “thinking that requires knowledge of more than one fact to logically and systematically apply concepts to a …problem” (Morrison and Free, 2001, page 20). Finally, designing alternatives that require a high level of discrimination can also contribute to multiple choice items that test higher-order thinking. Burton, Steven J., Sudweeks, Richard R., Merrill, Paul F., and Wood, Bud. How to Prepare Better Multiple Choice Test Items: Guidelines for University Faculty, 1991. Cheung, Derek and Bucat, Robert. How can we construct good multiple-choice items? Presented at the Science and Technology Education Conference, Hong Kong, June 20-21, 2002. Haladyna, Thomas M. Developing and validating multiple-choice test items, 2 nd edition. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. Haladyna, Thomas M. and Downing, S. M.. Validity of a taxonomy of multiple-choice item-writing rules. Applied Measurement in Education , 2(1), 51-78, 1989. Morrison, Susan and Free, Kathleen. Writing multiple-choice test items that promote and measure critical thinking. Journal of Nursing Education 40: 17-24, 2001. Teaching Guides Quick Links Services for Departments and Schools Examples of Online Instructional Modules Page Content Sidebar Content Main Navigation Quick links All TIP Sheets Taking Lecture Notes Study Tips for Biology Classes How to Study for Tests Working Successfully with a Study Group Avoiding Test Anxiety Multiple Choice and Other Objective Tests Essay Tests Take-Home and Open-Book Tests Plan Ahead: Studying for Finals TIP Sheet MULTIPLE CHOICE AND OTHER OBJECTIVE TESTS General Statements about Objective Tests Objective tests require recognition and recall of subject matter. The forms vary: questions of fact, sentence completion, true-false, analogy, multiple-choice, and matching. They tend to cover more material than essay tests. They have one, and only one, correct answer to each question. They may require strict preparation like memorization. Before Answering Listen carefully to oral directions. Notice if there is a penalty for guessing. Glance quickly through the entire test. Observe point values of different sections. Budget your time. Read the instructions and follow them. Write your name on each page of the test. While Answering Read all directions carefully. Read each question carefully. If allowed to, underline key words. Answer the easy questions first. Skip questions that stump you. Mark them to come back later. If you have time at the end, go back to the questions you marked. Do not go back over every question. Reread only the ones that you were unsure of. Do not second-guess yourself. Change an answer only if you are absolutely sure your first answer was wrong. The odds are in your favor that your first answer was right. Make sure you have answered all the questions. If you have no idea of the answer, guess! STRATEGIES FOR TAKING OBJECTIVE EXAMS Prepare thoroughly for all of your exams. There is no real substitute for studying. Start studying for your final exam the first day of class. Use a variety of study strategies. Know your preferred learning style and take advantage of it! Pay no attention to students who finish early. Do not automatically presume that students who finish early did well on the test (they often leave early because they didn't study enough!) Plan on being the last one to leave. That way you can relax and make the most of your time. Ignore what other students are saying before and after the exam. Consider all alternatives in a multiple choice question before making your decision. Always guess if there is no penalty for guessing. Do not guess if there is a penalty for guessing and you have no basis on which to make a good choice. Eliminate options which are known to be incorrect and choose from the remaining options. Look for information in test items that will help you answer other questions. Pay close attention to key words on True-False Tests. a. Closed words (such as never , only , always , all , none , and most ) are often (but not always) indicators of a false statement because they restrict possibilities. b. Open words (such as usually , frequently , mostly , may , and generally ) are often (but not always) found in true statements. STEPS TO REMEMBER To help you score as high as possible on all exams we have devised a plan of attack called SCORER. Each letter in the word stands for an important rule in test-taking. SCORER is based on the experience of many teachers and students and on research findings -- it might work for you! S - Schedule your time. C - Clue words help. O - Omit the difficult questions. R - Read carefully. E - Estimate your answers. R - Review your work. S - The first letter in SCORER reminds you to SCHEDULE your time. Consider the exam as a whole. How long is it? How many sections? How many questions? Are there especially easy or very difficult sections or questions? Estimate roughly the time needed for each section. Schedule your time. For example, in a 50-minute test containing 20 questions you can spend about 50 divided by 20 or 21 minutes on each question. If you start at 9 AM you should be one-third finished by 9:17 halfway by 9:25 working on question 16 by 9:40. If you lag much behind these times you will run out of time before you finish the test. C - The second letter in SCORER reminds you to watch for CLUE WORDS. Almost every question has built-in clues to what is wanted. In a true-false test the Instructor must make up questions that are absolutely true or absolutely false. If he asks: "An unhappy childhood produces a neurotic adult. (True or False?)," he has a question he cannot grade. The more you know about psychology the more difficult this question is to answer. It is sometimes true, sometimes not: true for some people, false for others. "An unhappy childhood always produces a neurotic adult." Vs. "An unhappy childhood never produces a neurotic adult." Vs. "An unhappy childhood sometimes produces a neurotic adult." The first two are clearly false and the last is clearly true. The words always, never, and sometimes are called clue words. "All men are taller than all women." "Some men are taller than women." "Men are never taller than women." "Men are usually taller than women." "Men are sometimes taller than women." Answers: False, True, False, True, True The clue words are all, some, never, usually, sometimes. These words are a key to answering objective test questions. Some clue words such as all, every, none, exactly, always, and never indicate that the statement is absolutely true. Exceptions are not allowed. If they appear in a statement it must be true in every case to be true at all. For example: "All squares have four equal sides." (That's a definition.) "Every insect has six legs." (if it has more or less than six it is not an insect.) "Politicians are invariably dishonest." (That means there has never been an honest politician. We're not certain, but we think this is false.) Other clue words such as many, most, some, usually, few, or often are qualifiers. They indicate a limited range of truth. "Some apples are green." (Sure, some apples are also yellow, pink, and even red.) All clue words are red lights for test takers. When you see one, STOP and learn what it is telling you. O - The third letter in SCORER reminds you to OMIT the DIFFICULT QUESTIONS. A test is not the sort of semi-fatal illness you fall into; it is a battle to be planned, fought, and won. You size up the enemy, look at the terrain, check out his artillery, develop your strategy, and attack at the place you have the best chance of success. The 0 rule in SCORER says that to score high on tests you should find the easiest questions and answer them first. Omit or postpone the more difficult ones later. The procedure for an objective exam is the following: Move rapidly through the test. When you find an easy question or one you are certain of, answer it. Omit the difficult ones on this first pass. When you skip a question, make a mark in the margin. (Do not use a red pencil or pen. Your marks could get confused with the grader's marks). Keep moving. Never erase. Don't dawdle. Jot brief notes in the margin for later use if you need to. When you have finished the easy ones return to those with marks, and try again. Mark again those answers you are still not sure of. In your review (that's the last R on SCORER) you will go over all the questions if time permits. R - The fourth letter of SCORER reminds you to READ CAREFULLY. As we have already explained, it is very important that you read the directions carefully before you begin. It is also very important that you read each question completely and with care. Read all of the questions. Many students, because they are careless or rushed for time, read only part of the question and answer it on the basis of that part. For example, consider the statement "Supreme Court decisions are very effective in influencing attitudes." If you disagree with some Supreme Court decisions you may mark it false after reading the first six words. The political scientist knows it is true. He is not asking you whether the Court is doing a good job, only what the effects of its decisions are. Read the question as it is. Be careful to interpret the question as the instructor intended. Don't let your bias or expectation lure you into a false reading. For example, the statement "Once an American, always an American." may be marked true by a super-patriot who believes it should be true. Legally, it is not true. Read it logically. If the statement has several parts, all parts must be true if the statement is to be true. The statement, "George Washington was elected president because he was a famous film star." is false. (Not in 1776. Today it might be possible.) The statement, "Chlorine gas is a greenish, poisonous, foul-smelling, very rare gas used in water purification," is false. (It is not rare.) E - The E in SCORER reminds you to ESTIMATE. Your instructor may never admit it, but you can go a long way on an objective exam by guessing. On most true-false or multiple-choice tests, your final score is simply the number you answer correctly. Wrong answers are ignored. There is not a penalty for guessing. On some tests you may have points subtracted from your score for wrong answers. Be certain you know how the test will be scored. If the test directions do not make it perfectly clear, ask your instructor. If there is no penalty for guessing, be certain you answer every question even if you must guess. If you have plenty of time, proceed as we have already outlined: omit or postpone the difficult questions, answer the easy ones first, return to the difficult ones later. Guess on any you do not know. (But be careful. Your instructor may be upset if you start flipping a dime and shouting "Heads" and "Tails" during the exam.) If the test is a long one and you are pressed for time, answer the easy ones, guess at the difficult ones. If guessing is penalized, then do not guess on true-false questions and make an educated guess on multiple-choice questions only if you can narrow the possibilities down to two. Guess at completion or fill-in questions if you have any idea of what the answer is. Part of a correct answer may earn some credit. "Guesstimating" is an important part of test-taking. R - The last letter in SCORER is a reminder to REVIEW your work. Use every minute that is available to you. Anyone who leaves the exam room early is either very foolish or super-confident. Review everything you have done. Return to the double-checked, difficult questions. Reread them. Look for clue words. Look for new hints. Then go to the checked questions and finally to the unmarked ones if there is still time. Don't be too eager to change answers. Change only if you have a good reason for changing. Be certain you have considered all questions. It is most important to build up your knowledge and understanding of the subject through systematic study, reading, and class work. SCORER is designed to help you do you best with what you know. __________________________________________ More on Multiple Choice Tests Following are additional specific strategies that can be used when taking multiple choice tests: There are three major reasons that multiple-choice questions appear on many college tests. They can be used to test all aspects of students, knowledge and their ability to reason with information that they have learned. If students have difficulty expressing their thoughts in writing, poor writing ability will not lower their grades on multiple-choice tests. When answers are recorded on answer sheet, multiple choice tests are easy to grade. Because of these advantages, you will answer many multiple choice questions on the tests you take during your college career. Stems, Options, and Distractors Multiple-choice questions are usually either incomplete statements followed by possible ways the statements may be completed or they are questions followed by possible answers. The following question is an incomplete statement followed by possible ways the statement may be completed.  In this country, the ultimate legal responsibility for the education of children belongs to: a. parents. b. states. c. the federal government. d. local school boards. The first part of a multiple-choice question is called the stem. The stem of the above example is: " In this country, the ultimate legal responsibility for the education of children belongs to " The choices that are given for answers are called options. These are the options in the example: parents; states; the federal government; local school boards Options are written so that one is the correct answer and the others are distractors. The correct answer to this question is option b; options a, c, and d are distractors. Correct answers are supposed to be selected by students who know correct answers. Other students are supposed to be distracted and select one of the other options -- one of the distractors. Eliminate the distractors The basic strategy for answering a multiple choice question is to eliminate the distractors and to select as the correct answer the option that is not a distractor. One way to locate distractors is to analyze a multiple choice question as though it is a series of true-false questions. The following questions about American history may be analyzed in this way. Centers for early gold rushes were in the present-day states of: a. Oklahoma and Texas. b. California and New Mexico. c. Kansas and Nebraska. d. Nevada and Colorado. This question, like most multiple-choice questions, is actually a series of true-false questions, only one of which is true. All the options are false except d. When you answer a multiple-choice question, indicate with an X or a check mark the options that you decide are distractors. For example: Oklahoma and Texas. X California and New Mexico . Kansas and Nebraska. X Nevada and California . In this example, a student has decided that option a and option c are distractors. She/He will eventually cross out option b and decide that option d is correct, or she will cross out option d and decide that option b is correct. The correct answer is option d. Use common sense and sound reasoning You may sometimes be able to select the correct answer to a multiple-choice question by using common sense, sound reasoning, experience you have had, and information you know. For instance, since you have been or have known many male adolescents, you can probably use your experience to answer the following question correctly. Which of the following is not a secondary sex characteristic of normal male adolescents? a. Their voices deepen. b. They grow facial hair. c. Their subcutaneous fat increases. d. Their muscles develop noticeably. Even if you do not know what a secondary sex characteristic is, you do know that options a, b, and d state facts about male adolescents. You might, therefore, conclude that option c does not state a fact about young men. Option c is the correct answer; it describes female adolescents. Sometimes you may know information that will help you to select a correct answer. For instance, you may know that the word intrinsic refers to "that which is within." If you know the meaning of intrinsic, you should be able to answer the following question correctly. Which of the following is an example of an intrinsic reward? a. food b. money c. praise d. self-approval If you know the meaning of intrinsic , you should select option d as the correct answer. Self-approval is an intrinsic reward – it comes from within a person. Food, money, and praise, on the other hand, are extrinsic rewards – they come from outside a person. Summary for Multiple Choice Questions When you answer a multiple-choice question: 1. Cross out the distractors and select as the correct answer the option that is not a distractor. 2. Use common sense, sound reasoning, experiences you have had, and information you know to select correct answers. When necessary, make your best guess: Although no specific techniques can be applied to all multiple choice tests, the following are frequently means of getting points out of questions for which you don't really know the answers. Occasionally, testers overlook some of the faults described below. It is important to use the following techniques with care to determine if they are applicable. I. AT TIMES THE LONGEST ANSWER IS THE CORRECT ONE. Example: The results of research on a sample drawn form the 9th grade students who have failed Algebra will: a. have no specific significance. b. yield important data for all high schools. c. generalize for the narrow population, but may carry implications for similar populations. The answer is c, mainly because it is the longest and most complete. Usually a test writer makes up a multiple choice test by leafing through the material to be tested. He may come upon a statement that seems to provide a question and answer, and he bases the multiple choice item on this. Test writers in a hurry write as few words as they can get away with. Therefore, they skimp when they are writing incorrect choices on a multiple choice test. The best way to determine length is to compare the number of words used in the answer. The physical length is less important. Usually the choice containing the most words is the right answer. II. IN A CARELESSLY WRITTEN TEST, ONE OR MORE OF THE POSSIBLE ANSWERS MAY BE ELIMINATED ON GRAMMATICAL GROUNDS. Examples: Which of the following are the best source of information concerning the interior structure of the earth? a. barogram b. seismograms c. thermogram d. hygrogram The question asks for a plural answer. ("Which of the following are....") Only b is a plural answer, so that is the correct one. Shakespeare's reference to clocks in "Julius Caesar" is an example of an: a. anachronism b. antiquareanisms c. poetic licence d. ignorance Grammatical grounds eliminate option c since the question calls for an answer beginning with a vowel " example of an ...." Answer a and b begin with the same syllable, so it is probably one of these two: b is plural, and the question asks for singular answer. The best choice is a. III. IF TWO CHOICES BEGIN WITH THE SAME SOUND OR CONTAIN DISTINCTIVE SOUNDS OR SPELLING, THE CORRECT ANSWER TENDS TO BE ONE OF THESE TWO CHOICES. Often a test writer will think it smart to include among the wrong answers a distractor similar to the right answer. This is done to ensure that the student is more than just vaguely familiar with what might be the correct answer. The functional unit of the kidney is: a. the pelvis b. the nephron c. the neuron d. the medulla Options b and c are very similar in spelling, so one of those is probably the answer. After this there are no clues, so that a student must use knowledge or guess. Option b is the correct answer. The water bearing layer of an artesian formation is most likely composed of: a. limestone b. sand c. granite d. sandstone The work "sand" is repeated in b and d, and "stone" occurs in a and d. Answer d has both repeated elements. The best guess could be d. IV. AVOID ANSWERS THAT REPEAT IMPORTANT WORDS GIVEN IN THE QUESTION. Many test writers routinely include wrong answers that repeat terms of the question just to distract wild guessers. An important commercial source of ammonia is: a. ammonia water b. coal tar c. soft coal d. petroleum The repetition of " ammonia " in answer a potentially eliminates that as the correct choice. "Coal" in both b and b suggests one of these answers, and c is the correct one. Test questions are often taken directly from the textbook. Watch for "unusual" or "catchy" statements. Watch for dates, definitions, or statements of facts. V. ASK, before you take the test, if you are penalized for guessing. If so, don't guess. The instructor may subtract the number wrong for the number right. Then you may pay twice for every wrong answer. VI. UNDERSTAND precisely how to indicate the answers. (Do you put your "x" by the right one or the wrong one?) VII. WATCH your numbers. It's easy to get mixed up. VIII. WATCH for special words. Statements with never or always are likely to be false. Moderate statements are often true. An answer that is "almost, but not quite true" is still false. Extreme statements are almost always false. Read through each question quickly and answer the ones you are fairly sure of first. Spend little time on the questions, and skip the ones you don't know. These can be analyzed when you can come back to them. Remember that these test techniques alone will not help you do well on a test. Your knowledge of the subject matter is the main determinant of how well you will do! Home | Calendars | Library | Bookstore | Directory | Apply Now | Search for Classes | Register | Online Classes  | MyBC Portal MyBC --> Butte College | 3536 Butte Campus Drive, Oroville CA 95965 | General Information (530) 895-2511 Qorrect Blog 7 Key Characteristics of a Good Test in Education in 10 Minutes Yasmine Nasr December 15, 2021 136,215 Views Table of Contents Sticking to as many characteristics of a good test in education as possible is a challenging process for teachers. In 10 min or less, you’ll get a brief on all commonly agreed upon characteristics, practical ways to employ them in order to make your test reliable, and top of the world universities that use them! One of the major goals of education is to prepare students for the next step in their future. They have to make sure that their learners have acquired enough knowledge about the field of study. Only good tests ensure this. A good test is not only a score that learners struggle to ace. It’s feedback a student receives to improve his skills and knowledge and a good teacher loves to get back to, always, to make sure their teaching strategies are on point and whether they need development or not. It’s also a feedback for decision-makers in all educational institutions and governmental positions who need good data to get to the next step of the institution or the State’s education plan. It’s not something centric that students spend days of anxiety on, wondering how well they will do in a given test and how well the test questions are actually written and whether they are questions they do know the answer to or not. What Are the Characteristics of a Good Test in Education? What is a good test in education? It is an evaluation through which teachers measure learners’ abilities and points of weaknesses and strengths. It gauges their knowledge in the field of study and provides both sides with real feedback. A good test should ensure that learners are ready to move to the next step whether this step is a high school, college, or even the military. In our previous event, the first free online webinar, “ Ensuring Effective E-Assessment for Higher Education ,” Qorrect e-assessment team, discussed the complete cycle of a good test in detail focusing on higher education examination. The team discussed how to analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate the phases that together comprise the e-assessment life cycle , going through the e -assessment life cycle and its importance to higher education, edtech role in the evolution of the digital assessment process . That’s plus considering the contribution of edtech in improving assessment quality , analysing the examinees’ responses, assessing the exam’s quality and the effectiveness of the involved questions in measuring what they are designed to measure. Read our article “ Why You Shouldn’t Overlook the Importance of Probing Questions in Teaching ” What Are the Qualities of Good Assessment? An assessment is a process through which students can share their educational experiences. In order for a test to be a good tool for measuring students’ knowledge and skills, it should have the following characteristics of examination that are essential for the success of any test. Reliability or Consistency Reliability or consistency of a test means that learners should perform the same or get the same score if they are exposed to different questions in different times and places. A test is considered reliable when the same result is achieved over different tests. As James Carlson mentions in his research memorandum, “The reliability of test scores is the extent to which they are consistent across different occasions of testing, different editions of the test, or different raters scoring the test taker’s responses.” He also mentions some statistics to describe how a test can be reliable. How to Make Sure Your Test Is Reliable? Score Distribution: The percentage of test takers at each score level. Mean Score : The average score, computed by summing the scores of all test takers and dividing by the number of test takers. Standard Deviation : A measure of the amount of variation in a set of scores. It can be interpreted as the average distance of scores from the mean. (Actually, it is a special kind of average called a “root mean square,” computed by squaring the distance of each score from the mean score, averaging the squared distances, and then taking the square root.) Correlation : A measure of the strength and direction of the relationship between the scores of the same people on two tests. Reliability is the ratio of the true score and the observed score variance. To measure a test’s reliability, we may administer a test to the same group more than once. However, errors may occur as students may forget or have some physical problems. Thus, it is crucial to administer the same test in identical conditions to ensure that we will get the same results. Read “ How to Make an Online Exam for Students in Only Minutes ” A validity of a test can be achieved when the test measures what it is really intended to measure. Therefore, a certain criteria must be selected. Validity is very important to gauge the quality of a given test as questions must be in line with the selected criteria and measures. Here are some of the top different types of validity: Content Validity: A test should fairly represent the content of the course or the field of study. Criterion Validity: It is used to predict the performance of a job applicant or a student.   Convergent validity : This is mostly used in the field of sociology or psychology. Discriminant Validity: Discriminant validity means that a test of a concept is not highly correlated with other tests that are set to measure theoretically different concepts. See how you can make objective, valid tests in education using Qorrect e-assessment system. Reserve a free Demo now . Objectivity According to Gronlund and Linn “Objectivity of a test refers to the degree to which equally competent scores obtain the same results,” the test should be away from any personal or subjective judgment. It should be based only on the evaluation of human development. For example, in an essay-type test, students answer differently as each one has his/her own style of writing. Hence, when more than one instructor check the test, they may give different scores according to whether they like the style or not. So, here, the test is less objective. To avoid such bias, sharp rules should be set in evaluating such types of tests. There should be a unified guide for teachers to use while correcting such tests. Personal judgment does not occur in true or false or multiple choice tests. Besides, teachers should receive training on how to score a test as untrained teachers may give wrong scores and not be able to maintain the required fairness and accuracy. Read “ Standardized Tests: History and Implementation in Universities ” Comprehensiveness A test should fully cover the entire field of study that students are exposed to during the course. Vague questions should not be included especially during online tests when students are confused and short in time. Absence of Ambiguity There has to be no place for ambiguity especially in online tests where examiners are absent. Students should not be left in confusion and all questions have to be crystal clear. According to Jacobs, Lucy C., from Indiana University, “ambiguous questions constitute the major weakness in college tests. Ambiguous questions often result when instructors put off writing test questions until the last minute. Careful editing and an independent review of the test items can help to minimize this problem.” Read “ What’s the Difference between Online Exam and Offline Exam ?” Preparation To ensure the success of any test, instructors should take into consideration the following factors:       Students have to be well-prepared for the test through extensive revisions and discussions.       There should not be any gaps between the revision period and the exam.       Examiners should make it clear to students which topics are expected to be tackled in the exam.       Students should be well-trained for the test type. Appropriateness of Time One of the top characteristics of a good test is when students have appropriate time to answer all questions. For example, essay questions require more time than multiple choice or true/false questions. Some teachers take the test themselves first and then double or triple the time for students. A good test is supposed to be practical and comprehensive. Our Conclusion of Characteristics of Good Test    There is a strong sense, however, that the use of the word ‘characteristics’ or ‘criteria’ is not optimal. It implies the development of standards against which assessments could be judged. Instead, we believe there should be a general agreement that the word ‘framework’ captures our desire to create a structure that might be useful in the development of a good test in education more precisely. 7 Outstanding Characteristics of a Good Online Test     No logistic setback  Easy access from anywhere     High speed      Support essay questions, multiple-answer questions, short answers, & equation & scientific questions     Built-in questions bank in quality online test systems     Immediate students results reports are generated     Highly detailed, error-free analytics reports on students’ performance as well as test and questions quality Characteristics of a Good Test with Examples What is the purpose of a test. It is an evaluation process through which examiners know who you are and what you know and think. They identify how you are different from others. Types of Tests Tests can be categorized into two types according to the questions they tackle: Essay Questions Tests     This type is intended to gauge students’ information and knowledge of the field of study. It measures their writing skills and how well they are able to show their personality in writing.     There should not be anything to be memorized as students answer according to their understanding of the course materials.     Through this type of tests, instructors are able to measure students’ logical thinking and problem solving skills. Read “ Proctored Exams: Here’s How to Successfully Do Remote Proctoring ” Objective Questions Tests Such tests are easy to be marked as they have true and false answers and hence they are away from any personal opinion or subjectivity. For example, true or false and multiple choice questions are objective tests.   In an article titled “ Harvard Courses Turn to Monitored Exams, Open-Book Assessments, and Faith in Students As Classes Move Online ” Juliet E. Isselbacher and Amanda Y. Su, The Crimson writers, showed experiences of different professors through the COVID-19 pandemic and how they were forced to switch to online learning. Professor Robert N. Stavins decided to change the exam to be open-book so as to guarantee equality among students especially during the absence of any monitoring during the online tests. Other professors preferred to keep the same old style of the closed-book exam ensuring that it is verified and monitored as professor Chaudoin said “We have to trust the students, and the online exam tools give us a partial way to monitor things.” Iaura Rose Smith, from the University of Manchester, shared her experience in her article titled “ My Online Exam Experience and Top Tips for Students .” She made it clear that online examinations have changed her way of studying.  Instead of just thinking of passing a test, she focused on revision, knowledge, and real understanding of the course material. She said, “I would recommend using this opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of your subject area and expand your knowledge further than the curriculum.” Verbs Best Used in Good Tests Educators recommend using a set of key verbs related to Bloom’s theory, classification of educational objectives, when writing any type of test questions/test items. This list of verbs guarantees that the teacher or test creator is indeed asking the right questions, equivalent to that of the students’ level of knowledge and understanding. Here are some of these verbs, according to California State University website. Knowledge                          Arrange – define describe – duplicate identify – label – list match – memorize name – order – outline recognize – relate – recall – repeat reproduce – select – state Comprehension Explain – summarize paraphrase – describe illustrate – classify convert – defend describe – discuss distinguish – estimate explain express – extend – generalized give example(s) -identify – indicate – infer – locate paraphrase – predict recognize – rewrite review – select summarize – translate Application Use – compute – solve demonstrate – apply construct – apply – change – choose compute – demonstrate discover – dramatize employ – illustrate interpret – manipulate modify – operate practice – predict prepare – produce relate – schedule – show sketch – solve – use – write Analysis Analyze – categorize compare – contrast separate – apply – change – discover choose – compute demonstrate – dramatize – employ illustrate – interpret manipulate – modify operate  – practice predict – prepare produce – relate schedule – show – sketch – solve – use – write Synthesis Create – design hypothesize – invent develop – arrange assemble – categorize collect – combine comply – compose construct – create design – develop – devise – explain formulate – generate plan – prepare – rearrange – reconstruct relate – reorganize – revise – rewrite – set up – summarize – synthesize – tell – write Evaluation Judge – recommend critique – justify appraise – argue assess attach – choose – compare – conclude contrast – defend describe – discriminate estimate – evaluate explain – judge – justify interpret – relate – predict – rate – select summarize –  support – value Qualities of Traditional and Online Assessment With the exposure of online learning and the use of advanced software systems in education, most instructors had to change the traditional way of testing. Traditional Assessment Teachers used to measure students’ knowledge only by how they score in a given exam. They give students only one chance to show their competencies without discussions or classroom projects. Online Assessment Online assessment is a way through which teachers can improve students’ learning, knowledge, beliefs, and skills. Online assessments can be behavioral, cognitive, or communicative assessments. Students may take the online assessment in the classroom or at home and this reduces their stress. New tools are now introduced for instructors to set different types of assessments. They can use game-based assessments through many tools such as Kahoot, as mentioned in our previous article “ 11 Best Exam and Assessment Platforms of 2021 .” Teachers can also create polls and activities. Moreover, Google Forms enable teachers to create and grade quizzes. They can choose multiple-choice quizzes or short-answer quizzes. Some tools also provide teachers with excel reports of students’ grades and feedback can be sent easily to students directly after the exam. Many advanced software systems allow teachers to deliver reliable and cheat-free exams to students and grade them instantly. This saves a lot of time for teachers. Qorrect (e-exams system) generates automated reports of the test results. To analyze the quality of the test, it provides feedback that no cheating happened during the online exam, and analyzes the performance of the students during the examination. Read “ Summative Assessment Overview, Purposes, and Best Online Software ” How Do I Write a Good Test?       Be specific       Do not use ambiguous questions.       Choose a suitable format for your test.       Avoid the open-ended questions unless you are willing to accept any answer.       Choose your words carefully and avoid any ambiguous language.       Students should know how much each of the questions are worth. To conclude, teachers should create their exams away from any subjectivity, ambiguity, or lack of comprehensiveness. The appropriate format should be selected to match the course materials and to measure students’ knowledge and skills. 15 Things You Need to Know about the Characteristics of a Good Test in Education Here are 15 tips the American Board concluded its workshop “ Modes of Classroom Assessment ” with: Bloom’ theory of educational objectives classification, in which cognitive skills exist in a hierarchical order, is important in any assessment. Assessment works better when they are ongoing and integrated into instruction as opposed to episodic and marginally referenced to classroom instruction. Lots of faculty members use MCQs for their classes because they are able to cover much greater content and in a very short period of time; plus they’re known to be very easy, compared to other questions, and are quick to score.   Many professors and test managers prefer to use other types of tests to  assess their students/examinees: essay, papers or electronic portfolios, projects, presentations tests.  Both views are not incorrect! However, a great teacher would use all of the previously mentioned assessment forms throughout the academic year. The value of tests is much greater and more pronounced when they are performed as a part of a completely comprehensive program that’s designed to enhance learning, progress, performance, and the educational institution’s success “A comprehensive assessment-instruction system should contain a variety of assessment techniques.” A test can only test what it was formed to assess. So it’s up to the decision-makers to process the data generated from it. Summative assessments are called “assessments of learning,” and formative assessments are called “assessment for learning.” There should always be a balance between the intellectual skills being assessed. Specific and descriptive instructional feedback that will help students to improve their learning and prepare for mastery of the curricular topics are central to effective formative assessments. Frequent short tests are more instructionally helpful and provide better assessment data than infrequent extended exams. Diagnostic assessments measure a student’s current knowledge and skills for the purpose of identifying a personalized program of learning for that student. Quality assessments are valid, reliable and unbiased. A test is no better than the quality of items it contains. Are You Testing Students or Customers? In their book “ The Trouble with Higher Education ,” Patrick Smith and Trevor Hussey had a unique outlook on the system of education in general. The book linked the rise of consumerism with education, addressing the effects this now has on everything learning-related. That includes how the system of universities works today and the high prices we face today in a lot of top of the world higher ed institutions and universities… too high some students stay in debt for years (although the book addresses education in the UK, a lot of other countries may relate to the issues raised). It is a significant consequence of these changes that students have come to see themselves as customers . Increasingly their perception is that they are buying a product. This encourages an instrumental view of education: its value lies not in itself but in what it can be used to gain. An education that has to be purchased at great expense is purchased for a purpose, and that purpose is what it will earn. At the very least it must pay for itself. Because of this we must start to raise the bar for quality education and testing. Because students or customers are now less willing to tolerate less quality education, teaching, facilities, testing, grading, & reporting. Do you want to see in action how you can employ the characteristics of a good test in education for FREE? Reserve a free demo now . Claim Your Free Trials   About Yasmine Nasr Streamlining Assessment for Learning: How Qorrect Integrates with Online Learning Platforms Incorporating technology in education is no longer just an option; it’s essential. Institutions are constantly … Eberly Center Teaching excellence & educational innovation, what is the difference between formative and summative assessment, formative assessment. The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments: help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately Formative assessments are generally low stakes , which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative assessments include asking students to: draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic submit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lecture turn in a research proposal for early feedback Summative assessment The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. Summative assessments are often high stakes , which means that they have a high point value. Examples of summative assessments include: a midterm exam a final project a senior recital Information from summative assessments can be used formatively when students or faculty use it to guide their efforts and activities in subsequent courses. CONTACT US to talk with an Eberly colleague in person! Faculty Support Graduate Student Support Canvas @ Carnegie Mellon Quick Links 485 IMAGES How Many Types Of Objective Tests Are There What is an Essay and What are the Major Essay Types Objective Types Tests : Types of Tests Objective Type Test Items Essay Examples and the 4 Main Types, how to write essay in english PPT VIDEO Characteristics of psychological test in urdu/hindi Opinion Essay/IELTS Writing Task 2/ IELTS Academic/ Essay Structure/ Essay Templates What is Essay? || Characteristics of A Good Essay || CSS || PMS "English Essay Topic COMPREHENSION By Ms Saima Zaidi" Types of Evaluation: Subjective and Objective, Formative and Summative Essay type tests/ long answer type tests/ items/ questions @sparshclasses COMMENTS Essay Test vs Objective Test Difference between Essay tests and Objective Tests. 1 - In essay items the examinee writes the answer in her/his own words whereas the in objective type of tests the examinee selects the correct answer from the among several given alternatives. 2 - Thinking and writing are important in essay tests whereas reading and thinking are important ... Essay Test Preparation Tips and Strategies Being able to identify and becoming familiar with the most common types of essay test questions is key to improving performance on essay exams. The following are 5 of the most common question types you'll find on essay exams. 1. Identify. Identify essay questions ask for short, concise answers and typically do not require a fully developed essay. The Four Main Types of Essay An essay is a focused piece of writing designed to inform or persuade. There are many different types of essay, but they are often defined in four categories: argumentative, expository, narrative, and descriptive essays. Argumentative and expository essays are focused on conveying information and making clear points, while narrative and ... Exam Questions: Types, Characteristics, and Suggestions Essay questions differ from short answer questions in that the essay questions are less structured. This openness allows students to demonstrate that they can integrate the course material in creative ways. As a result, essays are a favoured approach to test higher levels of cognition including analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Essay Exams You must be realistic about the time constraints of an essay exam. If you write one dazzling answer on an exam with three equally-weighted required questions, you earn only 33 points—not enough to pass at most colleges. This may seem unfair, but keep in mind that instructors plan exams to be reasonably comprehensive. PDF PREPARING EFFECTIVE ESSAY QUESTIONS workbook was developed to provide training and practice in discerning the often difficult. to see characteristics of effective essay questions and to support educators in the. development and use of essay questions. This workbook supports educators from all schools and disciplines. In addition, it. Essay Tests Essay Tests. There are basically two types of exams: Objective - requires answers of a word or short phrase, or the selection of an answer from several available choices that are provided on the test. Essay - requires answers to be written out at some length. The student functions as the source of information. PDF Essay Exams: Common Question Types Identify Essay Type This type of essay asks for short, direct answers and usually does ... "What are the main characteristics?" Key Words List Summarize Enumerate Describe Define State Explain Essay Type This type of essay should be fully thought out and developed in as Essay Test: The Ultimate Guide with The Best Strategies An essay test is a type of assessment in which a student is prompted to respond to a question or a series of questions by writing an essay. ... Identify the main topic or theme and any specific requirements or instructions. Then, create an outline to organize your thoughts and structure your response. Begin your essay with a clear and concise ... PDF AN APPROACH TO ESSAY TESTS the person who reads them. When you write answers to an essay test, one instructor might think your answers are worth an A, while another might think they are worth a C. STEPS TO TAKE DURING THE TEST 1. Read through each question once and carefully. Answers for some questions will come to mind immediately. Objective tests Introduction. Objective tests are questions whose answers are either correct or incorrect. They tend to be better at testing 'low order' thinking skills, such as memory, basic comprehension and perhaps application (of numerical procedures for example) and are often (though not necessarily always) best used for diagnostic assessment. PDF Is This a Trick Question? Essay and objective exams can be used to measure the same content or ability. TRUE Both item types can measure similar content or learning objectives. Re-search has shown that students respond almost identically to essay and objective test items covering the same content. 9. Essay and objective exams are both good ways to evaluate a student's ... Objective or Subjective? Those are the Questions 1. Objective, which require students to select the correct response from several alternatives or to supply a word or short phrase to answer a question or complete a statement. Examples: multiple choice, true-false, matching, completion. 2. Subjective or essay, which permit the student to organize and present an original answer. Advantages, Disadvantages of Different Types of Test Questions Advantages. Save instructors the time and energy involved in writing test questions. Use the terms and methods that are used in the book. Disadvantages. Rarely involve analysis, synthesis, application, or evaluation (cross-discipline research documents that approximately 85 percent of the questions in test banks test recall) Limit the scope of ... Essay Exams Essay Exams. Essay exams provide opportunities to evaluate students' reasoning skills such as the ability to compare and contrast concepts, justify a position on a topic, interpret cases from the perspective of different theories or models, evaluate a claim or assertion with evidence, design an experiment, and other higher level cognitive skills. Tips for Creating and Scoring Essay Tests Restricted Response - These essay questions limit what the student will discuss in the essay based on the wording of the question. For example, "State the main differences between John Adams' and Thomas Jefferson's beliefs about federalism," is a restricted response. What the student is to write about has been expressed to them within the question. Improving Your Test Questions I. Choosing Between Objective and Subjective Test Items. There are two general categories of test items: (1) objective items which require students to select the correct response from several alternatives or to supply a word or short phrase to answer a question or complete a statement; and (2) subjective or essay items which permit the student to organize and present an original answer. Writing Good Multiple Choice Test Questions In addition, the objective scoring associated with multiple choice test items frees them from problems with scorer inconsistency that can plague scoring of essay questions. Validity: Validity is the degree to which a test measures the learning outcomes it purports to measure. Because students can typically answer a multiple choice item much ... Multiple Choice and Other Objective Tests Multiple Choice and Other Objective Tests. General Statements about Objective Tests. Objective tests require recognition and recall of subject matter. The forms vary: questions of fact, sentence completion, true-false, analogy, multiple-choice, and matching. They tend to cover more material than essay tests. They have one, and only one, correct ... PDF Objective Tests Compare and contrast. Sometimes objective questions can be used to test your ability to distinguish concepts, ideas, theories, events, facts from each other. Construct diagrams, charts tables, or lists to summarize relationships. 5. Recite for precision. Review your retention of the information by recalling it often. Key Characteristics of a Good Test in Education in 10 Min Appropriateness of Time. One of the top characteristics of a good test is when students have appropriate time to answer all questions. For example, essay questions require more time than multiple choice or true/false questions. Some teachers take the test themselves first and then double or triple the time for students. Formative vs Summative Assessment The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. Summative assessments are often high stakes, which means that they have a high point value. Examples of summative assessments include: a midterm exam. a final project. a paper. a senior recital. essay homework paper phd project resume review speech study thesis