Session 07

Integrated Testlets: How to use multiple-choice structures to both test and form deeper physics knowledge in the classroom and beyond.

Multiple-choice testing is becoming ever more common in the physics classroom, as instructional resources dwindle and student populations rise. Multiple choice testing is easy to deploy, reliable, and inexpensive time-wise, yet there is often a sense that the format is somehow deficient in validity. The knock on multiple choice testing is that it easily assesses superficial knowledge but hinders assessment of deeper cognitive processes. Particularly in physics, we would like to find better ways to test deeper levels of understanding or knowledge integration than is typically afforded by multiple-choice tests. Immediate-feedback assessment tools enable the development of "integrated testlets"-a group of multiple choice questions that share a common stem but which may build one upon another to assess higher echelons of learning. Furthermore, the immediate-feedback tool allows for straightforward (and demonstrably valid) grating of partial credit. With integrated testlets, conceptual scaffolding is both tested and, if needed, assembled during the assessment. Thus, an integrated testlet that utilizes immediate feedback serves both summative and formative purposes.

In this workshop I will take the time to introduce both the immediate feedback assessment technique and examples of integrated testlets we've recently used in formal examinations in our department. Participants will actively engage with one or two testlets of their choosing to gain experience with both the technology and the workings of integrated testlets. Time will then be devoted to unpacking these experiences and to highlighting the pedagogical implications of being able to assess integration of knowledge with multiple-choice tools.

Biography

Aaron Slepkov is an Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Physics of Biomaterials, in the department of physics & astronomy at Trent University. He has broad research interests and expertise in nonlinear photonics, biophysics, and ultrafast laser microscopy. Aaron's interests in physics education research were born in a series of casual graduate-student lunchtime seminars in the physics department of the University of Alberta. Since then, he has devoted increasing amounts of time and anxiety to thinking about why physics is so universally unpopular among students. He has yet to find a satisfying answer to that question. His current PER research deals with classroom assessments and with developing new assessment tools specifically geared to science education.