Ever get tired of coming up with unique and thoughtful test questions? Crowdsource! Have your students help!
You need for your students to do their reading before class and come prepared to discuss it. You also need to come up with thoughtful test questions that are unique and check for comprehension. How about knocking out both of those at once? Here’s how!
Dr. Kathryn Zawisza of Philosophy has her students create two multiple choice and one short answer question on the reading. This lets the instructor know if they are understanding and hitting the main points. She also has them provide two things from the reading that they did not know or that they found interesting. This allows the instructor to address those aspects of the readings that students like and also provides topics for reflection questions.
She then chooses some of the best questions for the exam from that pool. Students are encouraged to try to create good questions because not only are they more likely to know the answer to a question they created but also because who doesn’t like to win?
OER Bonus: This is a great way to generate questions that can be used with OER textbooks that might not have the same test pool features that other commercial textbooks have.