Testing the test questions
When it comes to developing test questions, there’s the ordinary way and the fancy way. The ordinary way is to just make up questions and put them on the test. However, this can lead to questions that are misleading, confusing, or simply don’t test for the knowledge you’re trying to measure. The fancy way takes a lot of possible questions, tries them out on students, and whittles them down to the most useful. But this process is both time-consuming and expensive. A group of researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has found a way for schools, professors, textbook publishers, and educational researchers to check the quality of their test questions that turns out to be both fast and cheap. It invokes the power of crowdsourcing. View all posts in National & World Affairs Explore: The problematic growth of AP testing By Rebecca R. Hersher ’11, Harvard Correspondent | September 3, 2010 | ...