ChatGPT has surged interest to cause people to look for its use in different tasks. However, before allowing it to replace humans, its capabilities should be investigated. As ChatGPT has potential for use in testing and assessment, this study aims to investigate the questions generated by ChatGPT by comparing them to those written by a course…

College instructors in the United States usually make their own decisions about how to design course exams. Even though summative course exams are well known to be important to student success, we know little about the decision making of instructors when designing course exams. To probe how instructors design exams for introductory biology, we…

A standardized exam for program-level assessment can take the form of 1) a customized exam developed in-house by faculty and linked explicitly to program-level learning goals; or 2) a standardized exam developed externally by assessment experts and linked to a set of somewhat broader and more generalizable learning goals. This article discusses…

What are the purposes of exams? Would teachers give exams if they were not grading students? Exams provide information that should inform the instructional program, let the students know their strengths as well as areas for growth, and tell teachers what information their students know and what they still need to know. When determining how…

Teacher-made tests can be adapted for learning disabled students during the process of test construction (incorporating aspects of directions, individual items, and test design) or during test administration. (CL)

Discusses nine factors affecting the relationship between learning and test performance that can be controlled by the teacher: time on task, level of learning, question format, number of questions, inclusion of past work, difficulty level, grouping, use of new items, and difficulty distribution. (SR)

This article presents guidelines for writing better test items to evaluate student learning better. Recommendations are provided for writing true-false items (test only one idea in each item), multiple-choice items (include the bulk of information in the stem), and matching items (only use homogeneous lists). Examples are provided. (Contains 7…

Surveys of college faculty members' current use of objective tests indicated that most respondents (N=38) did not use state-of-the-art procedures associated with construction and analysis of objective tests. Many were unfamiliar with basic testing terms and tools and did not understand the meanings of the terms and tools. (SM)

A practical approach is outlined for adapting teacher-made tests to meet the needs of mildly handicapped mainstreamed students. The approach calls for modifying test construction, test administration, and test sites, and teaching test-taking strategies. A table lists test-taking problems (poor comprehension, poor auditory or visual perception,…

This study encompassed the collection of teacher reported (N=326) testing practices and the direct assessment of teacher-made tests (N=175) for item cognitive functioning levels and construction errors. Focus was on assessing the nature and quality of teacher-made tests used in public school classrooms and describing the classroom teachers'…

Teaching students to use language creatively and for communication requires creative and communicative tests. Creative tests allow students to give divergent answers; communicative tests allow for both meaningful language usage and meaningful contexts. This discussion of creative, communicative tests has four parts: (1) a review of formats that…

The Austin Independent School District (AISD) became interested in evaluation and testing skills of teachers when district and school averages on competency ratings in the area were among the lowest since 1979. School districts, as well as teacher preparation programs, should devote serious attention to the improvement of these teacher skills. In…

The evaluation tools written by teachers are rarely valid or reliable. One teaching aid that can help in the creation of an effective evaluation instrument is called a test map. A test map is a systematic method to consider variables that are important in the construction of the format of a test. Five variables that are discussed in the test…

A discussion is presented which includes the following topics: purposes of testing, planning your test, instructional objectives, testing understanding, testing computation, testing applications and problem solving, evaluation and diagnosis, marking, and communicating with parents. (MK)

Standardized college-level tests of thinking have serious drawbacks, but they can be used effectively to compare results with other teachers or researchers and to suggest possible ways of measuring aspects of thinking in faculty-constructed tests. Faculty-designed tests should provide opportunities for students to use the important knowledge and…