Tips for Creating and Scoring Essay Tests

Tips for Creating and Scoring Essay Tests Essay tests are useful for teachers when they want students to select, organize, analyze, synthesize, and/or evaluate information. In other words, they rely on the upper levels of Blooms Taxonomy. There are two types of essay questions: restricted and extended response. Restricted Response - These essay questions limit what the student will discuss in the essay based on the wording of the question. For example, State the main differences between John Adams and Thomas Jeffersons beliefs about federalism, is a restricted response. What the student is to write about has been expressed to them within the question.Extended Response - These allow students to select what they wish to include in order to answer the question. For example, In Of Mice and Men, was Georges killing of Lennie justified? Explain your answer. The student is given the overall topic, but they are free to use their own judgment and integrate outside information to help support their opinion. Student Skills Required for Essay Tests Before expecting students to perform well on either type of essay question, we must make sure that they have the required skills to excel. Following are four skills that students should have learned and practiced before taking essay exams: The ability to select appropriate material from the information learned in order to best answer the question.The ability to organize that material in an effective manner.The ability to show how ideas relate and interact in a specific context.The ability to write effectively in both sentences and paragraphs. Constructing an Effective Essay Question Following are a few tips to help in the construction of effective essay questions: Begin with the lesson objectives in mind. Make sure to know what you wish the student to show by answering the essay question.Decide if your goal requires a restricted or extended response. In general, if you wish to see if the student can synthesize and organize the information that they learned, then restricted response is the way to go. However, if you wish them to judge or evaluate something using the information taught during class, then you will want to use the extended response.If you are including more than one essay, be cognizant of time constraints. You do not want to punish students because they ran out of time on the test.Write the question in a novel or interesting manner to help motivate the student.State the number of points that the essay is worth. You can also provide them with a time guideline to help them as they work through the exam.If your essay item is part of a larger objective test, make sure that it is the last item on the exam. Scoring the Essay Item One of the downfalls of essay tests is that they lack in reliability. Even when teachers grade essays with a well-constructed rubric, subjective decisions are made. Therefore, it is important to try and be as reliable as possible when scoring your essay items. Here are a few tips to help improve reliability in grading: Determine whether you will use a holistic or analytic scoring system before you write your rubric. With the holistic grading system, you evaluate the answer as a whole, rating papers against each other. With the analytic system, you list specific pieces of information and award points for their inclusion.Prepare the essay rubric in advance. Determine what you are looking for and how many points you will be assigning for each aspect of the question.Avoid looking at names. Some teachers have students put numbers on their essays to try and help with this.Score one item at a time. This helps ensure that you use the same thinking and standards for all students.Avoid interruptions when scoring a specific question. Again, consistency will be increased if you grade the same item on all the papers in one sitting.If an important decision like an award or scholarship is based on the score for the essay, obtain two or more independent readers.Beware of negative influences that can affect essay s coring. These include handwriting and writing style bias, the length of the response, and the inclusion of irrelevant material. Review papers that are on the borderline a second time before assigning a final grade.

Dissertation Writers

Dissertation Writers Dissertation Writers Planning Tips for Dissertation Writers You have been working hard for some months already, but now you feel that you have to rush through your dissertation because you are extremely short of time? Unfortunately, this situation is familiar to many dissertation writers. The reasons for this misfortune can be numerous, but in many cases they have failed to write their dissertations on time because they did not plan their time in a proper way. When you have just chosen your topic, you may think that you have a lot of time ahead, and it is true. Keeping this idea in mind, many dissertation writers just lose the first very important weeks doing nothing. Even if you do not bumble along and start work, for example you begin gathering evidence for your dissertation, you can easily be trapped. Remember, time flows away very fast. And if you do not prepare a schedule of your dissertation work, even a rough one, then the consequences can be frustrating. If you do not allocate your time, you might devote too much time to some parts of your dissertation and leave others neglected. Well, if you understand the importance of planning, you can do it this way. Take a large sheet of paper and make a draft of your work schedule. Draw your university timetable, and do not forget to mention your social activities, part-time job etc. Then mark out some periods of time from one to two hours that can be devoted to your dissertation. Some hard-working dissertation writers work for hours without having rest, but it is not reasonable because after two hours work your brain will get tired and your work will not be effective. Moreover, planning your work keep in mind when you can work effectively. Can you work early in the morning or late at night? Preparing your table, write down your interim deadlines the way you see them. For example, note by what time you think your methodology should be prepared etc. When you your work schedule is ready, consult your supervisor, ask him whethe r he approves your plan. Many dissertation writers avoid consulting their supervisors, which is a very big mistake. You might have problems if you do not show your work to your supervisor, and it is not very wise to refuse the assistance of your tutor. Well, we are sure that if you make use of these tips, you will be one of those lucky dissertation writers who write their dissertations without problems.