Comments on: Writing Tests

By: Writing Review Sheets « 360

Writing Review Sheets « 360 — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:18:27 +0000

[...] Review Sheets I was re-reading the post Writing Tests recently, and thinking about how I prepare for exams. In particular, I was thinking about how I [...]

By: TwoPi

TwoPi — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 12:13:29 +0000

It was quite liberating (and a huge time-saver) to give up on the idea of 100 point exams. Sometimes 1/4 of the time spent in test preparation could be taken up by fudging points up and down, aiming for a total of 100 without making any one problem too significant.

The 1000 point idea resonates with me. Inevitably when grading a 67 point exam, I find myself staring at student work on a 4 point problem and wanting to give 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 points out of 5. So I do, and my students tolerate it, probably better than if that 4 page exam was worth 500 points and all scores were natural.

By: Batman

Batman — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:53:07 +0000

Before I switched to my current grading scheme (based on percentages), I used a total-point grade: (pts earned)/(pts possible). It made more sense to make the tests uniform in that case, since that was the only way to have them weighted equally. Now, I don’t need to do that – I could even make the tests worth 1000 points, though my students might object to that.

By: Kristen

Kristen — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:19:16 +0000

I also very rarely give 100-pt tests. I teach pre-calculus, and it’s hard to give a test or quiz with more than 10 or 15 questions because we also have only 50 minutes (minus the 5 minutes just getting ready to take the test!). I usually make up the tests and then assign point values for each question… so I, too, end up with tests worth 72 or 85 or some other random number of points. I remember while I was student teaching that bothered my supervising teacher (the one assigned from my university who was an English teacher). She thought that tests should all be 100 points. (Guess that makes the percentages easier to figure!)

By: Ξ

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:40:57 +0000

Ah, yes, test writing. Seems to me that it should get easier, but it seems like it takes me just as long to write a good test as it did years ago.

I’ve done reverse engineering in Calculus: it’s particularly nice when you have a problem involving Critical Points, because it’s nice on a test if the derivative factors nicely (or doesn’t, depending on the point you want to make). Or in Linear Algebra, especially with Eigen-stuff problems.

One trick I’ve also found is not to have 1 point on the final equal 1 point on exams. I used to make mid-semester exams 100 points but since exams might be 20% of the final grade and the final exam might be 30%, that required a final exam with 150 points. In theory it was nice to have a lot of 10 point problems on the final; in reality I found my students got bogged down. Now I don’t worry about matching, and I just weight the exams accordingly.