Hi all. I'm hoping you can give me some advice regarding Readiness
Assurance Test questions, as I'm struggling to write questions that are
simultaneously fair, challenging, useful, and related to big concepts
rather than details.
On one hand, I gather that the test questions are supposed to fulfill a
"readiness assurance" function that involves assuring that each students
has grasped the basic concepts that s/he will need to be prepared for
team exercises. This seems to suggest that the questions should cover
basic, big picture topics, rather than details.
On the other hand, I gather that the tests are intended to hold students
accountable for reading. I take this to mean that the students should
generally not know the answers to the questions (or be able to figure
them out) unless they have actually done the reading. This seems to
suggest that the questions should cover details that one would only know
if one had done the reading.
In my discipline (land use planning), the big picture topics are
relatively easy to grasp, which makes me feel like they don't lend
themselves very well to challenging test questions. As a result of my
desire for the questions to be challenging and to require the students
to have done the reading in order to have a greater-than-random chance
of choosing the correct answers, I have found myself drifting toward
questions that focus more on details (important details, but details
nonetheless) rather than bigger concepts. As you might be able to guess,
my students have complained about this, and have told me that the tests
should cover bigger concepts instead of details.
So I'm left to wonder: how can I write questions that cover big concepts
without being "too easy" as to be not very useful while still covering
material that students must have read in order to figure out?
Thanks,
Mark
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Mark Stevens, PhD
Assistant Professor, School of Community& Regional Planning
University of British Columbia
223-1933 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada
http://www.scarp.ubc.ca/profiles/faculty/Mark%20Stevens
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