Quizzes and Exams

Use of online quizzing continues to grow. If taken online, quizzes don’t consume valuable class time. Grading occurs automatically and doesn’t consume valuable teacher time. Students get feedback immediately. The technology also offers a variety of format options. But do we know anything about how

What’s a “good” grade as far as students are concerned? What’s a “bad” grade? Are some grades “neutral” and cause neither disappointment nor pride? Where’s the cutoff for good grades and the starting point for bad ones? In the study referenced below, researchers solicited data

Finals that cover all the material presented in the course are decidedly unpopular with students. They much prefer exams that include one chunk of content at a time. But there are good reasons to make finals comprehensive. Consider these results from a recent study of

Students don’t like comprehensive exams because most of them don’t use good cross-course study strategies. They wait until finals week and then they start reviewing. Here are some ways teachers can help students develop and use study strategies that make preparing for and doing well

They’re the kind of questions that promote thinking and result in sophisticated intellectual development. They’re the kind of questions teachers aspire to ask students, but, according to research, these types of questions aren’t the typical ones found on most course exams. Part of the disconnect

I give my second-year undergraduate students the opportunity to forecast their final course grades while the course is still under way. The goal of this predictive or prognostic feedback is to help the students develop a more realistic assessment of their progress in the course

Because research into the effects of test-item order on exam performance has produced equivocal results, the editor recently suggested that “it is not a bad idea for instructors to systematically order test items and analyze the results to see how test-item order might be affecting

I’m “reflecting” a lot these days. My tenure review is a few months away, and it’s time for me to prove (in one fell swoop) that my students are learning. The complexity of this testimonial overwhelms me because in the context of the classroom experience,

Students don’t like them—that almost goes without saying. They prefer unit exams that include only material covered since the previous exam. And they’d like it even better if the final wasn’t a comprehensive exam but one last unit test. But students don’t always prefer what

Frequently instructors discourage cheating on multiple-choice exams by creating different versions of the exam. Test questions may be reordered randomly, according to their degree of difficulty, or in the order the material was presented in class, or the answer options may be ordered differently. The