Developing and using tests effectively

It is estimated that up to 20 percent of a professor's time is spent evaluating the impact of instruction. Yet most faculty receive little formal training in classroom testing or other means of determining which students have attained course objectives and which have not. Developing and Using Tests Effectively offers practical guidelines that faculty members can use to improve their skills in the development, administration, and grading of classroom tests. This book offers specific how-to advice on every stage of the testing process, including planning the test and classifying objectives to be measured, ensuring the validity and reliability of the test, and grading to arrive at fair grades based on relevant data. Lucy Jacobs and Clinton Chase examine the strengths and weaknesses of many types of tests, including both traditional (multiple-choice, true-false, matching, completion, and essays) and alternative (take-home, open-book, and oral) assessment procedures. For every testing procedure, they show how faculty members can write tests that are fairer and more valid and that do a better job of measuring what students learn - thereby improving faculty members' ability to assess learning outcomes. The authors reveal, for example, how essay tests may often measure only the skill of the grader in assessing what the writer has said -- and offer suggestions for improving the instructor's skill in reading essays and scoring them reliably. They discuss the problem of cheating and suggest ways to deal with it. They examine the advantages and limitations of using computers for classroom testing. And they describe such alternative assessment procedures as portfolios, journals, and peer testing. - Jacket flap.