TESTING AND EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES

The testing process is, ideally, complimentary to the learning process. Use of effective evaluation techniques allows diagnosis of student needs, and provides the instructor with raw data useful in arriving at "desirable learning outcomes." Ultimately, it facilitates communication between students and instructors.

Too often though, testing is used more exclusively for ranking or categorizing students, ignoring its role as a real, interactive component of instruction. Even more often, the potential is recognized but through lack of effective application it goes unfulfilled. The latter problem will be our prime focus of attention as we establish guidelines for constructing good tests. Instead of designing items to produce the most statistically impressive performance distribution or most convenient student categorization potential, we will be discussing the practice of composing items with an awareness and concern for their ability to reflect educational goals. In fact, a necessary pre-condition for effectively utilizing these guidelines is a rather concise definition of your instructional goals, ideally in specific terms of what you expect students to know and be able to do at given points throughout a course of study.

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