Some of my first freelance roles were writing assessment items for various training materials. Namely, I wrote new driver training tests for each and every single state. This was a very profitable endeavour, and assessment item writing comes pretty easy to me, but you multiple each state by 100 (or more) and tell me how sore your fingers are after typing out all of those assessment items…that being said, I do still hold a place in my heart for assessment item writing.
What is this ‘assessment item’ you speak of?
Well. An assessment item is any item, able to be measured, which tests what (or whether) your learner has learned the material you have presented to them. Basically, each question in a quiz/test/exam/knowledge check, etc.
Most of us distinctly remember hand-writing detailed responses to long answer essay questions in high school…or filling out bubble sheet upon bubble sheet upon bubble sheet in our undergraduate degrees (at least if you majored in Psychology). Multiple choice, true/false, drag and drop, essays, long answer, short answer, fill-in-the-blanks – these are all types of assessment items (but certainly not the whole gamut).
Assessment items have different bits.
Assessment items consist of several variables: The stem (question) and the answer (either provided or needing to be written out) – in the case of multiple choice questions, there are also distractors .
In writing the new driver tests, I considered an assessment item to be the Stem, the Answer, and three Distractors. The stem would be the question (e.g. You arrive at a flashing red light. What does this mean?), the answer (e.g. you must come to a complete stop before proceeding when it is safe to do so), and three distractors (e.g. you must come to a complete stop and wait for the light to turn green before proceeding, you may proceed – slowly, you may only make a left hand turn).
There is much to consider when writing assessment items.
In the case of the new driver tests, the only real consideration was to be cognizant of the target audience (14-22 year olds) and write in a language for which they would understand, and to develop assessment items based on the individual state driver’s handbook.
However, I also have experience developing assessment items for college-level text books. For these items, I had to consider the content (the relevant chapter of the textbook) and write meaningful assessment items to test the learner, but I also had to consider the learning objectives for that chapter (to ensure I was assessing the learner in order to meet the learning objectives) and I had to consider Bloom levels. I previously wrote about Bloom’s Taxonomy here, and in relation to assessment item writing, there was typically a requirement to test to higher-levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. No good college-level assessment is comprised entirely of recall (in my honest opinion).
But…how do I know I’m writing high-quality assessment items? Don’t panic – Here are some resources:
20+ Tips for Writing Great Quiz Questions and Response Options
Improving your Quizzes with Immediate Feedback
Constructing a Bloom’s Taxonomy Assessment
Assessment and Bloom’s Taxonomy
Best Practices: 30 Tips for Creating Quiz Questions
The Anatomy of Great e-Learning Quiz Questions
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