What is Good Testing?: Perceptions of College Students

Abstract

How do college students define good testing and under what conditions do they perceive classroom testing as worthwhile? One starting point for answering these questions is to use data from stan dardized student ratings of courses. Many of the standard rating forms contain one or more items devoted to evaluation of the methods of testing used in a course. What does it mean when student evaluations indicate that an instructor was excellent in the area of examinations? The course evaluation form that we use on our campus (the Instructional Development and Effectiveness Assess ment, or IDEA, developed at Kansas State University) includes an item on preparing examinations. A high ranking on that item seems likely to reflect students' perceptions that ex amination procedures in a class have been effective. A phone call to the IDEA office revealed that they were unaware of any studies that had tried to determine how class procedures dif fered among classes that received vari ous ratings on testing. A review of cur rent literature confirmed that little or no research has been published on the topic. I made this study, then, to deter mine what was meant when students at