Blog 4

Constructive Responses assessments take the form of completion items, true or false, short answer, and long answer or multiple-choice tests. The advantages of all these items are that they are easy to construct, familiar to the student, and reliability. The students are used to these types of tests so one of the advantages is that students are comfortable with the format.


For completion items or fill in the blank items, a disadvantage can be making sure the items left blank are important to the objective. Since many of these responses are recalling items, it is important to make them: Meet objectives, be at or below student reading level, and limiting the number of blanks in an entry. An advantage is the ability to test key ideas or main points.

Multiple-choice questions are also reliable and easy to construct. Students are familiar and confident when taking them because the chances of getting a right answer are possible since the right answer is among the selections. A disadvantage is that the distracter answers may be too vague or too closely related to the right answer. This can make multiple choices difficult and leave more than one right answer as the choice. However, if the test is too easy obvious. The instructor needs to carefully consider phrasing and level of difficulty. Often times synonyms are used that can be misleading to the student and cause error, especially when the student knows the correct answer.

True or false questions are also easy to construct and can test recall knowledge of a chapter or unit. However, TF questions cannot delve into higher-level thinking. In addition, a disadvantage is the same as with multiple choices as the ‘wrong’ answer needs to be developed carefully and to avoid obvious wrong answers. If the test is too easy then you are not testing on the objectives but just on how to take a test.

Short answer questions can also be efficient and easy to write. These questions can start to assess higher level thinking especially are you wanting the student to explain or describe content information. A disadvantage is also in the scoring. Students may answer with reasonable responses but not exactly, what the content required. Sometimes a short answer question can be an exercise in “guess what I’m thinking” on the part of the instructor.

Long answer tests can develop higher level thinking also. However, these types of tests are often overwhelming and may be subject to rambling and off topic comments. An advantage is that the student has to provide a response in a well-written, well-organized response and therefore synthesize or evaluate information. These tests can be very difficult to grade as well as time consuming. Since every student may respond in slightly different ways, it is sometimes for the instructor to maintain accurate and consistent grading criteria.