Michael Rodriguez - The College Instructor’s Guide to Writing Test Items: Measuring Student Learning

Another important audience includes researchers in the areas of teaching and learning in higher education. The current attention to assessment of learning outcomes has inspired new research on the role of assessment in the higher education classroom. Researchers will find evidence-based guidance on principles of higher education assessment and principles of test item writing (to the extent that such research evidence exists). This will support those researchers creating or using classroom tests in their research and, of course, those conducting research directly on classroom assessment in higher education (if this might be you, please contact us and tell us about your work).

We must acknowledge and thank Tom Haladyna, our colleague and mentor. Tom was gracious enough to include us in an item-writing workshop for the National Council on Measurement in Education and in a number of publication opportunities. His extensive experience from research and practice in item writing provide a significant portion of evidence for the guidance presented in this book.

We also acknowledge the many colleagues and students who have contributed to our own understanding of the role of item writing in the college classroom and effective item-writing practices. Some of them have contributed example items throughout this book.

We thank the many contributors to Proola, the online item-development and -sharing tool that will be introduced and accessed throughout the book. Proola provides a way for instructors at all levels to share, edit, and obtain test items in numerous content areas. It promises to provide an important vehicle for a learning community focused on the practice of high-quality item writing. You can access Proola at http://proola.org.

All of our efforts in writing test items are intended to support the overarching goals of improving teaching and learning. Reviewing student item responses and evaluating test performance can also help us improve the item development process itself, both in terms of improving our ability to write effective items and in terms of improving features of individual items that we might use in the future. These improvements have the potential to inform instruction and learning.

In this chapter, we provide guidance to help you quickly review item responses and make decisions about the quality of individual items. The review process involves examining responses from the highest-performing students and then the frequencies with which incorrect options were selected or incorrect written responses were given. Taken together, this information can confirm that items are not flawed and can inform revising items for future useas well as improving item-writing skills in general.