CONTENT WRITING FOR PREPARING EFFECTIVE ESSAY QUESTIONS

When was the last time you used an essay question to assess student performance? Why did you choose an essay item over other forms of assessment? How comfortable did you feel with developing the essay item and scoring ...

When was the last time you used an essay question to assess student performance? Why did you choose an essay item over other forms of assessment? How comfortable did you feel with developing the essay item and scoring student responses? The answers to these questions vary from educator to educator. Educators choose essay questions over other forms of assessment because essay items challenge students to create a response rather than to simply select a response. Some educators use them because essays have the potential to reveal students' abilities to reason, create, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. In short, essay items are used for the advantages they offer. Despite the advantages associated with essay questions, there are also disadvantages. Have you ever labored over the wording of an essay question in an effort to make it clear and precise so that the students know exactly what you expect of them? Or have you ever felt the frustration of trying to develop reliable and fair scoring criteria for grading students' responses to essay questions only to discover that you were as unsure of what was asked for in the essay question as the students? These are some of the difficulties of essay questions. This workbook addresses the advantages and disadvantages of essay questions and illustrates ways of improving the use of essay questions. There are two major purposes for using essay questions. One purpose is to assess students' understanding of and ability to think with subject matter content. The other purpose is to assess students' writing abilities. These two purposes are so different in nature that it is best to treat them separately. This workbook will focus on essay questions that assess students' thinking skills. When going through this workbook it is important to keep this focus in mind and to understand that some of the rules and principles discussed may even contradict rules and principles that apply for essay questions that assess students' writing skills.