P-1: Create or obtain assessments
Tips for making the assessment efficient
When you scaffold questions and give multiple opportunities to show mastery, your test becomes longer to administer and grade. Always balance the need for thorough assessments with the importance of having a test that is manageable to take and evaluate. Consider these ways to make your assessment efficient:
o Write items that align to the learning goal, not to every objective – if you create questions for every single objective, your test will overloaded.
o Start with an easy beginning. The first few items on the unit assessment should require lower cognitive demand (low on the Bloom's Taxonomy rungs) - the easier questions. This will help ease students into "test-taking mode" and give them feelings of confidence and success right away. They will be more motivated to continue trying their best throughout the entire assessment.
o Evenly disperse cognitive demand. Difficult and time-consuming items (e.g. constructed response items) should be evenly dispersed throughout the entire assessment. Think of creating a test with equally spaced peaks of difficult items and valleys of easier items. This helps students maintain their test-taking stamina; they won't rush through a cluster of items requiring low cognitive demand, nor will they get frustrated and bogged down with a cluster of items requiring high-cognitive demand.
o Think of how long it will take to administer the test
Use this chart as a guide:
o Consider how long the test will take to grade – checking short answer questions will take longer than a multiple choice item. If two different question types accomplish the same purpose, consider using efficiency as a deciding factor.
o Align items for easy tracking. Ensure that you know which items align with which learning goals to make tracking students' progress more efficient (label each question).