Writing Exams

A few points that came out of our discussion...

Multiple Choice Questions

• Good for knowledge questions. Things the students knows or doesn't as opposed to a problem the student can figure out during the exam.
• Can help make students comfortable if the students worry about using the correct words and getting the vocabulary correct in free response questions.
• Answer choices can help a student get started if he doesn't know how to start the problem.
• Can allow students to pick 2 or 3 answers for partial credit on multiple choice.
• Which of the following statements are true: a) only, a) and c), all of them, none of them can be good multiple choice questions.
• Physics section of MCAT is multiple choice so multiple choice exams in a premed class may be the best preparation for the students.

Free Response Questions

• Easier to evaluate for partial credit.
• Good for emphasizing the process over the actual answer.
• Students can lose points because they don't communicate ideas well even if they do understand the physics. If you want to teach communication this can be good if not it can be bad.

Misc.

• Different students prefer different kinds of questions.
• Most instructors either give students an equation sheet or let students bring in notes, books etc.
• Several instructors reuse questions from semester to semester but most don't give the exact same exam.
• Consensus that it's OK to write some questions that you expect everyone to get correct to help build students' confidence. If you grade on an absolute scale rather than a curve you need to think carefully about how many of these questions to use.
• Most instructors make all questions of a given type worth the same number of points regardless of difficulty.
• It's a good exercise to think about what levels of Bloom's Taxonomy are represented on your exam.