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Commentary

Testing, Testing: Good Teaching Is Difficult; So Is Meaningful Testing

Richard J. Plano

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ 08854

Sidney Toby

Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ 08854

J. Chem. Educ., 2004, 81 (2), p 180

DOI: 10.1021/ed081p180

Publication Date (Web): February 1, 2004

Abstract

Multiple-choice questions are usually employed in testing in large science courses for speed, accuracy, and fairness in grading. A significant disadvantage is that students are often presented with an unrealistic choice of answers that may make it possible to work backwards from the answer, rather than forwards from fundamentals. In the real world, answers to numerical problems are rarely displayed in a list, waiting for the correct value to be chosen. We have developed optical scanning forms and software that allow the choice of numerical values, which are then scanned optically and graded with the possibility of partial credit for near-misses or missing factors.