Important Considerations

• What role should testing play in the learning process? How can tests create a real dialogue between ourselves and our students about what students do and do not understand? How can we avoid using tests to simply punish or reward cramming?
  
  
• Some suggestions:
  
  • Use frequent, small quizzes and tests rather than monolithic once-or-twice per-term exams.
    
  • Give students instant feedback on their performance (for example, putting the correct answers up on an overhead after all the tests are turned in.)
    
  • Consider allowing students to take quizzes first as individuals and then the same quiz again in groups.
    
    
• Multiple-choice questions are easiest to write when there is a definitively right or wrong answer. Multiple-choice testing of more interpretive material should always include an appeal mechanism in which students can and must make a written, evidence-supported case for their answer