I stress about writing tests, but rarely use the test banks that publishers provide. Most of the questions are simply unusable, because they’re poorly written, too picky, include “all of the above” or “none of the above” options (a cop out, IMHO), or are just outright wrong. Nothing challenges an instructor’s credibility with students more than when you have to throw out a bunch of test questions. If one is successfully challenged, students challenge them all.
I wrote my first test bank back in 1995, when I authored the ancillaries for my former UCLA professor, Jack Beatty. Our publisher, Brown & Benchmark, was very particular about their test banks, and put me in contact with a husband and wife team who actually study academic assessment in a very rigorous way. This experience was in some ways tedious, but in the long-term, very helpful.
Discovering Biological Psychology 2e Test Bank
Their advice certainly came in handy when it was time to write a test bank for Discovering Biological Psychology. My second edition test bank, which Cengage provides in both electronic and hard copy form, arrived in my mailbox today. For my first edition, I had some very valuable help from my friend Gayle Brosnan-Watters at the University of Pennsylvania, Slippery Rock. I wrote the “nuts and bolts” factual questions, while Gayle contributed some very creative conceptual and applied questions. For the second edition, the time frame was such that I was on my own. I added approximately 800 new multiple choice questions (phew!), but that was not all. To provide faculty with the greatest flexibility, we added 10 true-false questions, five or six short answer questions, and three essay questions per chapter. In addition, we provided some “figure-based” questions in each of these formats, so that faculty could ask students to write essays describing the structures or processes illustrated in one of the figures from the text.
I tried to make the question-writing process a bit more fun by using the Social Security list of popular names for 1990 and 1991 (with the assumption that many students who will be using the book will have those names).
Out Come the Magnifying Glasses to Read the Questions
I’d love to hear any feedback about the test questions from students and faculty, and no, the test bank is not for sale to students 🙂 This may be one of the more valuable books in my library, perhaps even more than my William James and Darwins.
1 Comment
raquelart22 · March 11, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Well I am disappointed that the test booklet is not for sale for students (I thought it would be a great study guide). I think test booklets are valuable because some teachers & professors are horrible with writing down what they want from their students. Language is very critical to understand when taking an exam especially if a professor doesn’t use the termology within the text book nor in literater. Another helpful think about the test booklete is the variety of styles a professor can select from and also help there students by offering different styles of the exam without doing extra work.
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