IF YOU WANT TO:
Balancing the difficulty of test items.
A professor of business administration distributes test items as follows: about 25% are reasonably easy questions that nearly everyone should get correct. About 50% of the questions require a little more sophistication but should be able to be answered by students who have kept up with the course material. About 25% of the items are quite challenging and generally will be answered correctly only by the top 5-10% of the class.
"A balanced test with easy, moderate and difficult items gives students an opportunity to show that they have mastered the fundamentals of the course or have gone beyond the minimum," explains this faculty member. "I try to give students a feeling of satisfaction at the end of the course by providing them with an opportunity to express what they have learned, rather than frustrating them because what they have studied does not appear on the exam."
A faculty member in civil engineering also balances his test items. "On my exams, 2/3 of the items test whether students have absorbed the material and 1/3 tests how well they can apply the concepts to new situations," he says.
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