Is this going to be on the test?

Exploring how the decisions instructors make when crafting exams impact students

Last week, our Evidence-Based Teaching Seminar series welcomed Christian Wright, PhD. Christian shared his research on assessments, and how instructors should be making careful decisions when writing exams. Faculty must consider a wide variety of areas when creating exams. Depending on their choices, they may be unknowingly causing students to drop out of biology programs.

There were a number of questions faculty consider when building exams:

• The breadth and depth of the content- Do you cover less in order to deepen student learning in a specific area? Certain collaborative activities help students learn better, but the cost is that faculty may not be able to cover as much content
• The level of the content- Bloom's Taxonomy is often thought to move students from lower to higher cognitive levels. However, if a professor is asking a multiple choice question that requires students to memorize specific passages of a textbook, those questions may be extremely difficult, but focused on a lower cognitive level.
• Open vs. closed questions- Faculty felt that open-ended questions helped them determine if students really knew the content, rather than just guessed the answer correctly, but were difficult to grade in large classes
• What resources to provide- Faculty that didn't share previous exams with students, allowed students with better social networks to have an unfair advantage in that social groups often had exam banks.

For more information, please review the video below, or contact Christian Wright @ ASU directly.

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