In addition to the good answers from David and jwr, I'd just add that (as a biology instructor) I used to have lots of angst around writing tests. I was always aiming for an elusive sweet spot where the test questions were related enough to in-class practice questions to be fair, but not exactly the same (so that they couldn't just repea…
In addition to the good answers from David and jwr, I'd just add that (as a biology instructor) I used to have lots of angst around writing tests. I was always aiming for an elusive sweet spot where the test questions were related enough to in-class practice questions to be fair, but not exactly the same (so that they couldn't just repeat previous answers verbatim). Switching to something like standards-based grading has relieved most of this angst because I'm now much more confident that I have communicated the standards clearly and am sticking to those appropriately.
In addition to the good answers from David and jwr, I'd just add that (as a biology instructor) I used to have lots of angst around writing tests. I was always aiming for an elusive sweet spot where the test questions were related enough to in-class practice questions to be fair, but not exactly the same (so that they couldn't just repeat previous answers verbatim). Switching to something like standards-based grading has relieved most of this angst because I'm now much more confident that I have communicated the standards clearly and am sticking to those appropriately.