Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!haven!purdue!decwrl!pyramid!leadsv!laic!nova!darin
From: darin@nova.laic.uucp (Darin Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Student and Course Integrity
Keywords: losers, responsibility, 90%, crap, 98%
Message-ID: <407@laic.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jan 89 20:24:00 GMT
References: <4550@homxc.UUCP> <4847@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <542@mccc.UUCP> <548@mccc.UUCP> <9286@ut-emx.UUCP>
Sender: news@laic.UUCP
Reply-To: darin@nova.UUCP (Darin Johnson)
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Organization: Lockheed AI Center, Menlo Park
Lines: 32

In article <9286@ut-emx.UUCP> nather@ut-emx.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:
>In article <548@mccc.UUCP>, pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes:
>> =I won't get started on multiple-choice testing ...
>In my view, there are NO good multiple-choice tests -- the very format
>precludes its use as a sensitive probe of a student's understanding.

Actually, I had a very difficult MC test, that did indeed show student
understanding.  In order for an answer to count, you had to show your
work!  Instead of 20 questions filling up a page,  there were maybe 4.
(I think the reason it was done this way was that students were asking
for a multiple choice test :-)

The work either consisted of showing the math, or giving a reference
or examples.  The nice thing about the test being multiple choice, is
that you could easily spot simple errors (such as having an answer the
same as one of the choices, but having the wrong sign).

In general, most of the MC tests I have taken were only 10-20% of the
test, and were used to check if the student had read the material,
attended lecture, etc. rather than just showing up on test days.
I don't think a student displays more or less knowledge if the
question is worded "which of these 5 is an example of x" instead
of "name 3 examples of x".  Also, having been a T.A./grader, I could
actually tell something about the student by comparing the score on
the MC section with the rest of the test (some actually did very well
overall, but not very well on the MC questions).

Still, having an all MC, or mostly MC test is a poor test of student
knowledge.

Darin Johnson (leadsv!laic!darin@pyramid.pyramid.com)
	"You can't fight in here! This is the war room.."