TALENT - Teaching and Learning Education for New Teachers

CME credits are temporarily not available for TALENT

Home

Directions

1: Introduction

2: Principals of Adult
Education

3: How Do People
Learn?

4: Planning for
Learning

5: Clinical Teaching

6: Teaching in the
Ambulatory Setting

7: Teaching in the
Inpatient Setting

8: The Art and Science of Effective
Lecturing

9: Learning in Small
Groups

10: General Principles
of Evaluation

11: Clinical Evaluation

12: Construction of
Multiple-choice
Tests

13: Giving Feedback

Final Thoughts

Quiz

References

Module 12: Construction of Multiple-choice Tests

After the test is given

After the test is administered, the instructor should analyze the results item by item. Any test items that are missed by most of the students should be thoroughly analyzed. Questionable items should be considered for revision before the test is administered again. Ideally, after years of teaching, an instructor should have a test bank consisting of numerous well-written test items from which to choose for a given content area.

An item analysis can reveal item difficulty, which is the percentage of students answering the item correctly.

Difficulty of an item	=	Number answering correctly

		Number taking the test

Optimally, difficult items are those that about 75% of the class answered correctly. Exams should contain only a few items that more than 90% or less than 60% passed.

This quick overview of test construction provides basic information for your consideration. Skillful test construction comes with experience. Item analysis is a form of feedback for the test developer.