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Testing testing...

23:51 / 22.01.02

Testing keeps coming up in a few threads...my exam results, should parents be tested, voting exam...to give some examples. Basically it seems the ideas that came to surface attacked the grounding or validity in the testing procedure and how it relates to actual understanding of an idea, situation, etc.

I'd say...how about, instead of using exams as a way to determine someone's knowledge, point more towards things (as an example) like surveying a person's attributes in great detail, analyzing the results, and then taking action to either create a balance or disorder in it. Or...how can the way testing is currently used become more effective?

So...how can different methods be deployed to assert views, rank, and ideas.

I know this is pretty general, but...anyone have any alternatives?

02:19 / 23.01.02

Short of brain scans and mind readers, no, not really.

Well, taking every test individual out for a weekend on a storm-tossed island, to live ruggedly in an abandoned lighthouse and eating only the fish we can catch together... that'd pretty much evaluate everything you needed to know.

17:33 / 24.01.02

The problem is that a test has to be an objective measure of a subjective being, and thus can't truly be correct. The only way to get proper results is to use a more subjective process, which could only work on an individual basis, and thus is useless in such terms as I sense you're looking for.

But in all honesty the best way to test a person is to marry them and somehow manage to live with them for thirty years.

Not very practical, I'm afraid.

23:16 / 29.01.02

As a philosophy teacher, I think about this problem a lot. This semester I teach in ten groups, of 50 pupils each. The evaluations I make have to ben Objective, option-selecting tests, which meassure their knowledge of history of philosophy.
And yet, that's not what I want to teach them. I try to teach them how to make philosophy, how to have a critic attituted towards life and society, to question.
And how could I evaluate that?
Socrates had one group of nearly twenty disciples. They shared with him most of the day, and they were with him because they wanted to. That's the ideal evaluation, share time with your students.
But, as someone already said, that would result in a cualitative evaluation, while schools are interested in quantitative education. No numbers, no money.
And even philosophers have to eat, no?

Food for thought

02:28 / 30.01.02

quote:Originally posted by ciarconn:
... The evaluations I make have to be Objective, option-selecting tests, which meassure their knowledge of history of philosophy....

This is absurd. Option selecting tests? This is multiple choice, right? Go to the dean. I've never even taken a class with multiple choice tests. It doesn't have to be this way.

11:20 / 30.01.02

Most of the tests are made with either multiple choise or column relation, and then the answers are codified in a score card that is cheked by a computer with a (king of) scanner. The reason for this is that checking 500 tests with ten open questions would be imposible for one teacher, and nobody has an assistant in here (highschool level)

14:18 / 30.01.02

ciarconn--you have my complete sympathy. teaching and evaluating philosophical thought 500 highschoolers at a time is impossible.

And that--in a nutshell--is getting to the core of what testing's function is: testing is a faith, based on the belief that the test can give a rough measure of "human merit" in some category. So there's that question of "merit": are some people simply "more meritorious" than others? And if they are, especially in an intellectual plane--as regards standardized tests for college entrance tests--does that mean that those people are "more deserving" of education?

And then, if we agree with that, does that mean that the "more deserving" of education are actually designated by the tests, or do those tests actually primarily serve to reinforce social/cultural categories that have more to do with race, economics, gender, than with true "merit"?

There's a good--LONG--article by Susan Strum and Lani Guinier (the black woman Clinton screwed--metaphorically, only--when he backed off on his support for her as a cabinet nominee back in the 90s) on this issue here.

16:57 / 30.01.02

What I'm kind of curious about as well, is the feedback process that occurs after the test results are found.

Say for instance...some teachers after a test, would go over the material covered in the exam...this would reinforce what was learned and give those who didn't solve the problem(s) access to the process to better understand it. Also helps the teacher understand that hir question(s) were understood. Seemed better than...oh...you got 70% of the questions right...now lets move on.

Also...something that came up in "my exam results" was how these numbers do or don't reflect anything when put to use in a job or in life. Is this an obvious and specific interest of any institutions that any of you have been a part of?

20:35 / 30.01.02

On a course on evaluation I recently attended, one of the "new" ideas they proposed was that evaluation/testing should be part of the learning process. They emphasized that the retroalimentation on the results of the tests was to be a part of the process, because they allow the student to see where are they wrong, what they do not know, and should have known. The real objective of this would be that the students know all what they should at the end of the course.