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Full-Text Articles in Education
Testing The Test: Item Response Curves And Test Quality, Gary A. Morris, Lee Branum-Martin, Nathan Harshman, Stephen D. Baxter, Eric Mazur, Suvendra Dutta, Taha Mzoughi, Veronica Mccauley
Testing The Test: Item Response Curves And Test Quality, Gary A. Morris, Lee Branum-Martin, Nathan Harshman, Stephen D. Baxter, Eric Mazur, Suvendra Dutta, Taha Mzoughi, Veronica Mccauley
Faculty and Research Publications
We present a simple technique for evaluating multiple-choice questions and their answers beyond the usual measures of difficulty and the effectiveness of distractors. The technique involves the construction and qualitative consideration of item response curves and is based on item response theory from the field of education measurement. To demonstrate the technique, we apply item response curve analysis to three questions from the Force Concept Inventory. Item response curve analysis allows us to characterize qualitatively whether these questions are efficient, where efficient is defined in terms of the construction, performance, and discrimination of a question and its answer choices. This …
Psychological Versus Generic Critical Thinking As Predictors And Outcome Measures In A Large Undergraduate Human Development Course, Robert L. Williams, Renee Oliver, Susan Stockdale
Psychological Versus Generic Critical Thinking As Predictors And Outcome Measures In A Large Undergraduate Human Development Course, Robert L. Williams, Renee Oliver, Susan Stockdale
Faculty and Research Publications
This article compares the predictive and outcome status of a subject-specific versus a generic measure of critical thinking in a large undergraduate course. Specifically, the predictive potential of critical thinking was assessed with respect to test performance, both for tests requiring critical thinking and for those requiring only direct recall. This paper also examines the extent to which answering practice-exam questions with embedded psychological critical thinking issues produced improvement in critical thinking. The impact of the treatment on the critical thinking of students who performed well or poorly on the course tests requiring considerable application of critical thinking was assessed.