Slide 1

Online Testing: Maintaining

Good Test Content

Online Testing:

Maintaining

Good Test

Content

Slide 2

Online Testing: Maintaining

Good Test Content

Overview

1. Creating, Reviewing and Maintaining Good Test Content.

2. Test Authoring Scenarios

3. Summary

Source: Test Generator – Online Testing: Maintaining Good Test Content

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Online Testing: Maintaining

Good Test Content

Creating, Reviewing and Maintaining Good Test

Content

When we refer to "test content" or "items", we mean questions and answers and any associated parameters such as question reference, point value, randomization, etc.

Source: Test Generator – Online Testing: Maintaining Good Test Content

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Online Testing: Maintaining

Good Test Content

Test Authoring Scenarios

Hopefully one or more of these scenarios match your current test authoring activities. 1 - Your organization buys packaged test content which may/may not track

the learning objectives defined during the training/learning experience.

2 - Your organization uses subject matter experts (SMEs), who have little if any experience or training in developing test content, creating, evaluating and publishing their own test content.

3 - Similar to 2, test content evaluated by one or more peer evaluators.

4 - The authoring, evaluation and test publishing process is conducted by a team to include trained test authors, subject matter experts and a psychometrician or two thrown in to the mix. All test content is subject to rigorous review before being published to a testing audience.

Source: Test Generator – Online Testing: Maintaining Good Test Content

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Online Testing: Maintaining

Good Test Content

Test Authoring Scenarios

My impression, based on countless discussions with customers is that their test authoring falls under scenario 1, 2 or 3. It's a crap shoot.

Scenario 4 is simply not an option for many organizations: too expensive, too time-consuming or simply not an approach that the organization is willing to take.

Source: Test Generator – Online Testing: Maintaining Good Test Content

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Online Testing: Maintaining

Good Test Content

Test Authoring Scenarios

At the risk of stating the obvious, here are some best practices for your consideration. 1 - Review your test content BEFORE adding it to your testing

software. We're making certain assumptions here: a) you have legacy items that are in an MS Word file, or in a spreadsheet of some sort.

2 - Prepare the questions for importing into the testing software's database

3 - Following the import of the items, we recommend reviewing the items AGAIN, in their new environment. This would be done at a question bank level, question banks ideally being the repositories for KNOWN, GOOD QUESTIONS. In our opinion this is a critical step because it is from question banks that test are created.

Source: Test Generator – Online Testing: Maintaining Good Test Content

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Online Testing: Maintaining

Good Test Content

Test Authoring Scenarios 4 - Create a test by importing items into the test from one or multiple question

banks.

5 - Publish the test for peer review ONLY. If "peer" means just you, then publish it by enrolling yourself in the test and view it as a test taker would see it.

6 - Correct and tweak. If you discover errors: spelling, grammar, formatting or technical errors in the content, now's your chance to fix them--before you publish the test to your test takers. If you discover that one or more items are simply "bad" items, it's a good idea to go back to the question bank and correct the item at a question bank level and keep track of the changes you made to the item. In TG there's a notes field that can be used as a journal entry to help you keep track of items that have been modified. Once you fix it at the question bank level, we assume you will be re-importing it into your test. Keep in mind that the original, "bad" item is still in your test, so make sure to remove the bad item from the test. You might have to repeat this "tweaking" process if you weren’t especially thorough in evaluating your test items WHILE they were in the question banks.

Source: Test Generator – Online Testing: Maintaining Good Test Content

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Online Testing: Maintaining

Good Test Content

Summary

Tracking down bad items AFTER a test is published is more troublesome than doing it on the front end.

You want your reports to accurately reflect whatever test-taker outcomes you are attempting to measure and NOT worrying whether or not you have bad test items.

You may not be able to provide scenario #4, but you can take steps to help ensure that you are delivering--to the best of your ability--test content that is accurate.

Source: Test Generator – Online Testing: Maintaining Good Test Content

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Online Testing: Maintaining

Good Test Content

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