Research on group testing is interesting. Before you stop reading because you think you would never do something this inhumane to your students, consider this — in virtually every study conducted on group testing, exam scores improve the most for low- and middle-achieving cohorts. Students report lower test anxiety and generally enjoy this form of collaborative problem solving over standard testing methods. In addition, they report that it promotes deep learning of difficult content.

The assumption is that students are debating, negotiating, sharing, and working through what they collectively know about a complex problem to come to a solution. Isn’t that what we do at work every single day? How many times in a week do we listen to each other’s ideas, debate an issue, and yes, sometimes compromise, to reach a final answer? I wonder if by NOT having students engage in activities like collaborative testing, we are doing them a disservice as we send them out into the world where employers expect them to have these skills. Continue reading →

About  20 years ago, I participated in my very first item-writing workshop with the American Council on Exercise as part of a three-day exam validation exercise. This was one of those paradigm-shifting experiences for me as an educator because I had never been that immersed in exam accreditation before, but also because I never knew that there was an actual art and process to writing valid multiple choice questions. The key here is the word “valid.” Who knew that carefully constructed multiple choice questions could actually utilize all levels of Bloom’s taxonomy? I thought multiple choice questions were only for the two lower levels of the pyramid: remembering and comprehending. The experience of exam question item writing for accreditation completely changed the way I assessed my students.

Here are some of the basics, but if you search the internet for “writing better test questions” or “writing better multiple choice questions,” you will find some very good resources to help you write really good stems for all types of questions. As with everything we write, nothing can substitute for good planning before you start. Continue reading →