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While we often think of exams as a way to test students’ comprehension of material, exams can serve more than one purpose. Being aware of why we are testing students and what exactly we want to test can help make students’ and instructors' experience of exams more useful. The following tips will gear you towards issues you should think about during the entire exam process, from planning to reflection. Before you start preparing an examWhy are you giving an exam to your students?
What do you want to assess?What you want to assess should be related to your learning outcomes for the course.
How do you decide what to test and how to test it?The overall exam should be consistent with your learning outcomes for the course. There are a number of ways to review and prioritize the skills and concepts taught in a course. You could:
What are the qualities of a good exam?
After the exam is readyPrepare a marking scheme or rubricPreparing a marking scheme ahead of time will allow you to review your questions, to verify that they are really testing the material you want to test, and to think about possible alternative answers that might come up.
Inform students of the purpose and parameters of the exam
After your students write the examMonitor the quality of your examsExams provide you with the opportunity to obtain feedback on student learning, your teaching methods, and the quality of the exam itself.
Reflect on the gathered informationReviewing examination results can help you identify concepts and methods that students are having difficulty with – questions that were missed – as well as concepts and methods that were well understood – questions generally successfully answered. Or it may highlight well-constructed or poorly constructed exam question. Consider using this information to:
Resources
CTE teaching tipsThis 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: Preparing Tests and Exams. Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo. |