The use of text books' standardized test question banks
I find many text books' test bank questions poorly written. I often wish the publishers would employ individuals who specialize in developing good test items to assess an individual's knowledge to write these. As instructors, we often do not have a choice in the text that is chosen for the courses we teach. In my career college situation, instructors have little prep time and rely on those test banks. Unless and instructor has taken a college level course on developing test items, students often get poorly constructed evaluation tools.
Hi Marian - Yes- unless your curriculum mirrors the standardized test, you do need to do the best that you can to get them familar with that exam.
Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
I'm required to give a standardized textbook exam at the end of the class. When I go through the chapter quizzes, the students always do really well on them. But when it comes time to taking the standardized exam, most of them fail. Part of it is because of them not studying enough, but I think a contributing factor is that the questions are written very differently then how the chapter quizzes are. It almost seems like I have to teach the students the material and also how to take a test.
I must agree some of the test banks leave room for improvement.
Hi Nan- Thanks for your post to the forum. I'm glad that you got some useful ideas to use in your teaching! Best wishes for coninued success in your teaching career. Susan
I agree with Pamela. Teaching at a career college, instructors have very little preparation time and the course length is very very short. We always on the "run" or in a "rush" to generate quizzes/exams. I have to rely on text book's test bank to save time. However, after taking this module, I think I will be more critical in term of selecting questions and may be even make changes for clarity for my students. I learned what to look for in each test formats. Thanks.
Text books'standardized test questions can help instructors develop questions. It can be utilized as a template to give the instructor direction.
The other issue to look at is the standardized testing used in an organization where all tests are the same for everyone. This poses the problem of less freedom in teaching the content
I have found two books I use to use realy cheezy test engines and the questions are a joke to my students.
I have used info from other books, instructors, and searched the net for better, up to date information
