Frustrations with Online Assessments

About a year ago I decided that I would pursue a masters degree in Educational Leadership. This will be fun, I thought.

I have been working in education for the past 8 years and for the past 3 as an administrator. Education amazes me and provides my mind a constant stream of positions to consider. Entering into public education so late in my career has left me with substantial pockets of information that need to be filled. By pursuing this degree, I felt that I would be a more well rounded member of our leadership team and most importantly I would have a better understanding of a teacher’s responsibilities.

So, getting to the topic of assessments. Fun? Not so much.

I have always been especially bad at taking assessments. I could usually illustrate my knowledge if I was asked to write a paper. Maybe I lacked the prose that my sister might have used, but I usually was able to articulate the point at hand. So what about those wonderful assessments that simply asked streams of questions? Turns out, that at almost 50 years old, I’m still terrible at answering them correctly.

Teachers and professors are big fans of negated questions. This is a valid question structure. Some multiple choice questions are easier to write if there is only one wrong answer. However, it also requires a skill that I seem to completely lack. On the surface, I would say that I’m not reading the questions critically. But it is more than that. Students like myself are so focused on making sure that they pick the right answer that they miss the fact that it says “not” at the end of the question. The past 4 questions asked me to pick the “right” answer, why is the teacher now asking me to pick the wrong answer? It is deceiving. Multiple choice questions by their nature are hard to discern the correct answer. You may have 5 choices that are very similar. A question that is negated is going to have numerous choices that are correct, making it easy to wrongly pick the “best” option. Lastly, when a negated question comes down to choosing between two options it is even harder for students such as myself to notice the negation at the end of the question’s text. There’s only one option, of course, this is the right option.

Teachers and professors must understand that they are testing their student’s ability to take the test as much as they are their ability to master the content. Some of you do it intentionally and I say shame on you. The intent of an assessment is to measure your student’s level of mastery. Tactics like this do nothing except maybe provide a better spread across the standard deviations of your grades.

I have to wonder what real life experience is going to require me to be a good test taker.