Assessment - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 186

policy. This discussion aims to increase the prospective teachers' aware-
ness to the fact that the process of test construction is not a trivial task
and that special attention should be devoted to a variety of pedagogical
considerations.
• Stage C: Test construction, group work
At this stage, after the students have realized the variety of topics that
should be addressed while a test is constructed, they are asked to work in
groups and to construct a test on the topic they worked on in Stage A.
First, the students are asked to sketch the structure of a test. They should be
guided to decide about the questions' scope (in terms of their relative grade
in the test) and type, and to document their pedagogical considerations and
decision-making processes.
For example, with respect to question scope, the test can include either
many short and focused questions, questions of different scopes, or a small
number of wide scope questions. With respect to question type, the students
should decide whether the questions are open or closed, programming tasks,
etc. It should be emphasized that the decided framework can be changed later
when the details of the test are examined; however, it should be highlighted
that such an initial sketch of the test structure helps teachers clarify to them-
selves their pedagogical purposes and what kind of knowledge they actually
wish to evaluate.
Second, the students are asked to develop the questions of the test accord-
ing to the structure of the test they decided about. During this process, if they
decide to change that structure, they should explain why.
The process of question construction encourages the students to consider
topics such as, factors which determine the complexity level of a particu-
lar question, different solutions that learner may propose for a given ques-
tion, learners' mental processes, and the need to match questions to a specific
group of learners.
• Stage D: Test analysis, class discussion or teamwork
One way to facilitate this stage is to let each group present its test together
with its pedagogical considerations.
Another way to facilitate this stage, especially when the class is big and the
available time does not allow all the groups to present their tests, is to imple-
ment peer review and let each group analyze the test of another group (e.g., the
test of the group on its right), comment about it and returns it to the group that
designed it. Thus, in parallel, all groups analyze a test that was constructed by
another group, and immediately after that, receive another group's feedback
on the test they constructed. This teamwork can proceed by short presenta-
tions in which each group presents the test it analyzed.