NUTSHELL NOTES

"Teaching tips in a nutshell" - The University of Colorado
at Denver's One-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence
Office of Teaching Effectiveness
1250 14th St. Room 720
Denver, CO 80217-3364 
Phone (303)556-4915
FAX (303)556-2678
Volume 5 Number 3 

Assessment of Students III—Processing Multiple-Choice Tests

Although multiple-choice tests take more time to author, the time savings occurs when the special answer sheets can be machine-graded. On this campus, machine-grading available to instructors through the Office of Teaching Effectiveness provides several conveniences. The tabular output (Figure 1) includes students' names arranged alphabetically, raw score based on the number of questions, class percentile and rank, percent of questions answered correctly and percent of any questions left blank. When processed, this file can be downloaded directly from the computer into a spreadsheet, which allows those faculty who use spreadsheets for grade books to simply copy the desired data without having to retype it.


Figure 1. Abbreviated version of tabular output of student grade results.

Test processing requires input from a test key that is drafted by the instructor and run through the scanner as the first page. Because mistakes can occur in marking a key, a check is provided by incorporating a summary analysis (Figure 2) that shows the overall test results and whether an abnormally high number of students missed any one question. This permits an instructor to re-examine the key. If need be, the key can be corrected and the tests immediately reprocessed. A detailed question analysis (Figure 3) allows the instructor to see the distribution of correct and incorrect responses to each question. Multiple choice tests should have only one correct response, and test analysis software packages permit only one. If the question analysis reveals a high proportion of students responding to an incorrect choice, the instructor will wish to check the question to see if more than one correct choice was provided accidentally.

Our UCD scanner has an ink read head that requires special forms but allows students to use pen or pencil for responses. Faculty can operate the scanner themselves, so there is no waiting for processing. For access, contact this office by phone or by E-mail.
 
 
 


Figure 2. Summary of statistics of test processing.
 
 
 


Figure 3. Question analysis shows how students responded to each question through
its five options. Correct response options to each question are displayed in bold-face. 


Back to Index