Overview

Assessment is a critical component of instruction; properly used, it can aid in accomplishing key curricular goals. The impact of decisions regarding how and when to evaluate the knowledge and performance of your students cannot be overestimated. This session on General Guidelines for Writing Test Items has two parts. The first part will focus on the “best practices” for writing test items.

Objectives

• Explain the purpose of testing. 
• Identify what content should be tested, according to its relative importance. 
• Demonstrate your ability to write test items, by applying the general guidelines for item construction to your current and future exams. 
• Interpret the quality of the exam/item by using an item analysis, once the exam has been administered and scored, according to Kuder-Richardson 20 (KR-20) measurements. 
• Explain the importance of and provide feedback to students about their performance on each exam.

Speaker

Annie Daniel, Ph.D.
Director, CITL, Iowa Simulation Center, Des Moines University