Three simple tips to take into account when designing a test

There exists one task that teachers seem to fear designing tests. It seems quite hard to test everything both fairly and in a way that is easy to administer and mark. Below are three tips to set you on the right track.

Some teachers probably make their entire exam from scratch, or most of us take existing “end of unit” tests and join together bits and pieces to make our own class tests. There is nothing wrong with this particular method. However, there are some things left behind that you need to be aware of when doing this.

Probably the most prevalent is not being critical enough of the published materials we have access to for making our tests. Simply because it is published material does not mean that it’s good. Or that it’s a valid testing instrument.

There are 3 simple things to consider when designing a test.

Make sure the task actually tests what you want it to

This one may seem obvious, but there is more beyond the naked eye.

You have to look carefully at the task and ask these two critical questions:

What do the students have to do?
What do the students have to be able to do?

  

Don’t ask for more than is absolutely necessary to test what you want to test

Keep the response or required action to the simplest possible level you can. Don’t, for example, ask students to write their answer in words if circling a picture will suffice and don’t mark an answer wrong simply because the spelling is incorrect. If you want to test spelling then design a test on it!

Is the answer too obvious?

One may think of distractors but are the totally necessary? Probably on advanced levels matching words or sentences can be similar but always there must be a clear and concise answer.