Susan, I have used multiple choice, fill in the blank and essay type questions in different class room settings. It depends on the material I am teaching and how I want the material delivered. If I need the students to remember key terms then I like fill int he blank. I do think essay questions allow for more critical thinking and reasoning so I liek using those as well.
Unfortunately we are stuck in the multiple "guess" style of testing. Although it is a proven method of testing retention there is very little challenge to it. I feel that a business entity in the training field has to ask itself a very serious question, "do we want good looking results and happy students, or do we want high failure rates and a high quality product?"
In todays economic times I think the answer is obvious, yet even using this style of testing we still have our fair share of poor grades.
In short I believe the testing type chosen should reflect the intensity of training, meaning that a medical studemt needs to show a greater retention of knowledge than other fields.
Hi Warren - Iagree you can hardly know your students well in three weeks. You do an excellent job of covering the learning styles- I'll bet you have a great completion rate!
In our school we only have a group of students for three weeks. It's not enough tome to get to know them realy well. We are also given a preset curiculum and test. The only freedom we're given is in how we review the material; How we present the material and in how we test their "skills" in the lab. The lab task are also clearly defined. I do try to use a number of different ways to present material. I use the power point as well as write on the board. (I go through a box of dry erase markers every phase.) I also use actual componants to show and hand around the class when ever possible. I also use a veriety of review methods. We have cross words; word matches and I have written a number of completion quizes as well. I also will engage the class in a series of questions and again write on the boeard. I generaly guage the effectiveness on the completion rate. (Sad to say.) I have, over time, found that presenting things in several different ways gives my class the best chance of success. Though it always comes down to the prewritten test. For my self, I view the Lab or "skills" test as the most important for their training. The test itself usualy involves demonstrating several key skills.
I consider student learning styles as well as what they have been exposed to in the past. If I'm wanting to try a different type of test; I like to build in a classroom activity where they get a chance in a non-grading mode to get familiar with the testing format.
Mr. Baet, I would like to obtain the program that you fill in the Chapter and fill in the questions.
Thank you for your inoput
The development of competencies and choice of assessments should be a continuing process. As the needs of the career fields change so must the competencies and therefore also the assessments.
The tests I use are standardized for my class. With this in mind I normally have to make a point of teaching to the test, rather than testing what I teach. .
We have Pre-arrange test too, but there always room for "additonal" challenge task for student to tackle. But I understand where you are coming from, I feel the same way I feel stuck sometimes to the same written test.
We have a program that you just insert/fill in the Chapter of the book and title/author and just simple fill in how many question you need, divided in True or False, and fill in the blank question the program will do the Testing format.
Of course I don't know what you teach but is it possible for your students to do projects or demontrations to show what they have learned?
This is very good point, but this is the hardest part of being an educator,to be satisfied to the result, demonstrated by the student. We intent to look for more than what we give sometimes.
I used Multiple Choice and Fill in the blank. I found this very beneficial for the student. I think it's easy for the type of student we have here, mostly we teach adult student, so I fount this effective.
Unfortunately my course has pre prepared test that have been in use for months now. Are there any suggestions on how I could challenge the students in my own way without disrupting the course’s pre written test?
This one, unfortunately, is difficult to answer. My college provides pre-written tests for all modules of the curriculum. The tests are constructed off-site, in ASE style, to help students be familiar with the testing style they will be exposed to in their careers.
We use several ways, both in writen and in apling the skills to show they know what is going on. They do get the pride of seeing thier finished peice work as we are testing a running product at the end. We also have them aply computer skills to see if they can communicate with the user and the user can understand the documentation. That shows they can aply and feel good of their results.
This is true,I currently stick to what's set up by the school. I'am still learning the in's and out's of being a good instructor and hope to be able to do different type's of assessments in the future.
Thank you for the resource materials. Are there others?
Quite a few successful Business Law instructors that I have worked with swear by case studies in a team setting. The students must apply the legal principles to real life examples and be able to explain their decisions in dealing with the case studies. Here's an excellent site for finding and utilizing case studies:
http://www.law.stanford.edu/publications/casestudies
I teach business law to students who have no prior knowledge of the law (at least in an educational setting). Based on prior experience, I feel that testing is limited to basic comprehension of terms and basic concepts. I have never tried to test on higher levels of comprehension because of the blank stares I get when I try to explore these areas. I sometimes wonder if I'm selling my students short but my attempts to explore don't seem to work. Do you have suggestions?
I use a variety of formats, even within the same test. This allows for different learning styles. testing of most concepts can be presented in different formats successfully, I think the key is to first identify the learning styles of your students, as this provide some insight as to how they will succeed in testing
Size of the class and the time I can spend with each student in case of non understanding decide the format.
At the end each student shopuld have the knowledge as I'll monitor their progress through questioning and oral and written tests.
