essay items assessment

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• Essay Exams

Essay exams provide opportunities to evaluate students’ reasoning skills such as the ability to compare and contrast concepts, justify a position on a topic, interpret cases from the perspective of different theories or models, evaluate a claim or assertion with evidence, design an experiment, and other higher level cognitive skills. They can reveal if students understand the theory behind course material or how different concepts and theories relate to each other. 

+ Advantages and Challenges of essay exams

Advantages:

• Can be used to measure higher order cognitive skills
• Takes relatively less time to write questions
• Difficult for respondents to get correct answers by guessing

Challenges:

• Can be time consuming to administer and to score
• Can be challenging to identify measurable, reliable criteria for assessing student responses
• Limited range of content can be sampled during any one testing period
• Timed exams in general add stress unrelated to a student's mastery of the material

+ Creating an essay exam

• Limit the use of essay questions to learning aims that require learners to share their thinking processes, connect and analyze information, and communicate their understanding for a specific purpose. 
• Write each item so that students clearly understand the specific task and what deliverables are required for a complete answer (e.g. diagram, amount of evidence, number of examples).
• Indicate the relative amount of time and effort students should spend on each essay item, for example “2 – 3 sentences should suffice for this question”.
• Consider using several narrowly focused items rather than one broad item.
• Consider offering students choice among essay questions, while ensuring that all learning aims are assessed.

When designing essay exams, consider the reasoning skills you want to assess in your students. The following table lists different skills to measure with example prompts to guide assessment questions. 

+ Preparing students for an essay exam

Adapted from Piontek, 2008

Prior to the essay exam

• Administer a formative assessment that asks students to do a brief write on a question similar to one you will use on an exam and provide them with feedback on their responses.
• Provide students with examples of essay responses that do and do not meet your criteria and standards. 
• Provide students with the learning aims they will be responsible for mastering to help them focus their preparation appropriately.
• Have students apply the scoring rubric to sample essay responses and provide them with feedback on their work.

Resource video : 2-minute video description of a formative assessment that helps prepare students for an essay exam. 

+ Administering an essay exam

• Provide adequate time for students to take the assessment. A strategy some instructors use is to time themselves answering the exam questions completely and then multiply that time by 3-4.
• Endeavor to create a distraction-free environment.
• Review the suggestions for informal accommodations for multilingual learners , which may be helpful in setting up an essay exam for all learners.

+ Grading an essay exam

To ensure essays are graded fairly and without bias:

• Outline what constitutes an acceptable answer (criteria for knowledge and skills).
• Select an appropriate scoring method based on the criteria.
• Clarify the role of writing mechanics and other factors independent of the learning aims being measured.
• Share with students ahead of time.
• Use a systematic process for scoring each essay item.  For instance, score all responses to a single question in one setting.
• Anonymize student work (if possible) to ensure fairer and more objective feedback. For example students could use their student ID number in place of their name.

+ References & Resources

• For more information on setting criteria, preparing students, and grading essay exams read:  Boye, A. (2019) Writing Better Essay Exams , IDEA paper #76.
• For more detailed descriptions of how to develop and score essay exams read: Piontek, M.E. (2008). Best Practices for Designing and Grading Exams, CRLT Occasional Paper # 24.

Web resources

• Designing Effective Writing Assignments  (Teaching with Writing Program - UMNTC ) 
• Writing Assignment Checklist (Teaching with Writing Program - UMNTC)
• Designing and Using Rubrics (Center for Writing - UMTC)
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CONSTRUCTION AND MARKING OF ESSAY-TYPE TEST ITEMS: A PRACTICAL APPLICATION

2023, UNIAFRICA JOURNAL OF EDUCATION

The need for teachers to adopt good essay construction and marking/scoring techniques is imperative. The concern for reliability of students' assessment data necessitated this article. When teachers construct essay questions and score students' responses in test or examination unskillfully, unreliable scores are generated. Decisions made using such scores are decisions made on false data which may have far reaching implications on the education system and the society at large. This paper therefore discusses the advantages of essay test; disadvantages of essay test; measures to overcome the disadvantages of essay questions; and guidelines for constructing and scoring essay questions. The causes of delays and poor marking of students' scripts are highlighted and suggestions made which include the use of point score method of marking as it is preferred over the holistic method. Teachers should also be encouraged to mark one number across scripts instead of scripts by scripts.

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Current Developments in English for Academic and Occupational Purposes, 2007

Most literature on writing assessment offers a lot of guidance on design and validation of measures and items in essays and examination questions (e.g. Alderson and North 1991, Bachman 1990, Hamp-Lyons 1988). Most of this literature, however, seems to be oriented towards language tests and not to how information concerning exam questions is interpreted in the academic contexts for which most students work in. Nevertheless, the most extensive analysis of prompts in subject-specific contexts can be rightly attributed to Horowitz (1986a and 1986b), Canseco and Byrd 1989 and Braine (1989). These studies also make suggestions concerning implications of the analysis to the teaching of English for Academic Purposes. The concern of the present paper was to seek to build on these earlier studies by looking at the types of prompts found in essay and examination questions in an ESL context in Africa. In particular it attempts to find out: a) The general features of first year undergraduate essay and examination questions b) What these features tell us about what students need to know c) What are the features of format and/or content of which students need to be aware d) Whether there is significance in the nature of the distribution of prompts (specific or general) across disciplines or courses. This paper starts with looking at the general features of the questions including the marks allocated to different types of questions per department. Subsequently, the questions are then classified according to the categories and subcategories of prompts as proposed by Horowitz. The nature of these prompts is then discussed and a summary of the results and conclusions is then presented.

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ÇAĞ UNIVERSITY, INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING, 2013

This study investigated the validity and the reliability of essay scoring rubrics used for intermediate and upper-intermediate levels at a university English preparatory school. The rubrics were examined in terms of content validity and inter-rater reliability. In order to determine the content validity of the rubrics, a focus group interview was held with the participation of five writing skill instructors as the first research question. The aim was to what extent the writing class objectives and the descriptors of essay scoring rubrics matched each other. The focus group concluded that the rubrics were compatible with the writing class objectives of the preparatory school, but the descriptors of the rubrics needed to be re-designed. For the second research question, totally 351 C (intermediate) level and D (upper- intermediate) level students‟ essays were analyzed by using Pearson r correlation coefficient in order to see the inter-rater reliability between graders of the rubrics. The analysis results showed that the correlation between graders was low as Pearson r results for total scores of the students‟ essays were r= .623 for C level and r= .552 for D level at the 0.01 level. As the third research question, one more focus group interview was held with the same participants in order to develop a new institutional essay scoring rubric for the English preparatory school. The focus group developed a new essay-scoring rubric by taking the results of the first two research questions into consideration. The newly developed rubric was also analyzed by Pearson r correlation coefficient in order to see the inter-rater reliability between graders. 59 C (intermediate) level and D (upper-intermediate) level students‟ essays were used for that analysis. The analysis results showed that the correlation between graders was higher than the present rubrics as Pearson r results for total scores of the students‟ essays were r= .848 at the 0.01 level. As a result, the newly developed essay-scoring rubric provided more reliable results than the present rubrics used at the preparatory school. It may be concluded that having an institutional rubric, which is compatible with the needs and the objectives of the institution, meets the expectations and provides more consistent grading results.

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Background: Marking of essays is mainly carried out by human raters who bring in their own subjective and idiosyncratic evaluation criteria, which sometimes lead to discrepancy. This discrepancy may in turn raise issues like reliability and fairness. The current research attempts to explore the evaluation criteria of markers on a national level high stakes examination conducted at 12th grade by three examination boards in the South of Pakistan. Methods: Fifteen markers and 30 students participated in the study. For this research, data came from quantitative as well as qualitative sources. Qualitative data came in the form of scores on a set of three essays that all the fifteen markers in the study marked. For the purpose of this study, they weren’t provided with any rating scale as to replicate the current practices. Qualitative data came from semi-structured interviews with the selected markers and short written commentaries by the markers to rationalize their scores on the essays. Results: Many-facet Rasch model analyses present differences in raters’ consistency of scoring and the severity they exercised. Additionally, an analysis of the interviews and the commentaries written by raters justifying the scores they gave showed that there is a great deal of variability in their assessment criteria in terms of grammar, attitude towards mistakes, handwriting, length, creativity and organization and use of cohesive devices. Conclusions: The study shows a great deal of variability amongst markers, in their actual scores as well as in the criteria they use to assess English essays. Even they apply the same evaluation criteria, markers differ in the relative weight they give them.

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Essay test: types, advantages and limitations | statistics.

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After reading this article you will learn about:- 1. Introduction to Essay Test 2. Types of Essay Test 3. Advantages 4. Limitations 5. Suggestions.

Introduction to Essay Test:

The essay tests are still commonly used tools of evaluation, despite the increasingly wider applicability of the short answer and objective type questions.

There are certain outcomes of learning (e.g., organising, summarising, integrating ideas and expressing in one’s own way) which cannot be satisfactorily measured through objective type tests. The importance of essay tests lies in the measurement of such instructional outcomes.

An essay test may give full freedom to the students to write any number of pages. The required response may vary in length. An essay type question requires the pupil to plan his own answer and to explain it in his own words. The pupil exercises considerable freedom to select, organise and present his ideas. Essay type tests provide a better indication of pupil’s real achievement in learning. The answers provide a clue to nature and quality of the pupil’s thought process.

That is, we can assess how the pupil presents his ideas (whether his manner of presentation is coherent, logical and systematic) and how he concludes. In other words, the answer of the pupil reveals the structure, dynamics and functioning of pupil’s mental life.

The essay questions are generally thought to be the traditional type of questions which demand lengthy answers. They are not amenable to objective scoring as they give scope for halo-effect, inter-examiner variability and intra-examiner variability in scoring.

Types of Essay Test:

There can be many types of essay tests:

Some of these are given below with examples from different subjects:

1. Selective Recall.

e.g. What was the religious policy of Akbar?

2. Evaluative Recall.

e.g. Why did the First War of Independence in 1857 fail?

3. Comparison of two things—on a single designated basis.

e.g. Compare the contributions made by Dalton and Bohr to Atomic theory.

4. Comparison of two things—in general.

e.g. Compare Early Vedic Age with the Later Vedic Age.

5. Decision—for or against.

e.g. Which type of examination do you think is more reliable? Oral or Written. Why?

6. Causes or effects.

e.g. Discuss the effects of environmental pollution on our lives.

7. Explanation of the use or exact meaning of some phrase in a passage or a sentence.

e.g., Joint Stock Company is an artificial person. Explain ‘artificial person’ bringing out the concepts of Joint Stock Company.

8. Summary of some unit of the text or of some article.

9. Analysis

e.g. What was the role played by Mahatma Gandhi in India’s freedom struggle?

10. Statement of relationship.

e.g. Why is knowledge of Botany helpful in studying agriculture?

11. Illustration or examples (your own) of principles in science, language, etc.

e.g. Illustrate the correct use of subject-verb position in an interrogative sentence.

12. Classification.

e.g. Classify the following into Physical change and Chemical change with explanation. Water changes to vapour; Sulphuric Acid and Sodium Hydroxide react to produce Sodium Sulphate and Water; Rusting of Iron; Melting of Ice.

13. Application of rules or principles in given situations.

e.g. If you sat halfway between the middle and one end of a sea-saw, would a person sitting on the other end have to be heavier or lighter than you in order to make the sea-saw balance in the middle. Why?

14. Discussion.

e.g. Partnership is a relationship between persons who have agreed to share the profits of a business carried on by all or any of them acting for all. Discuss the essentials of partnership on the basis of this partnership.

15. Criticism—as to the adequacy, correctness, or relevance—of a printed statement or a classmate’s answer to a question on the lesson.

e.g. What is the wrong with the following statement?

The Prime Minister is the sovereign Head of State in India.

16. Outline.

e.g. Outline the steps required in computing the compound interest if the principal amount, rate of interest and time period are given as P, R and T respectively.

17. Reorganization of facts.

e.g. The student is asked to interview some persons and find out their opinion on the role of UN in world peace. In the light of data thus collected he/she can reorganise what is given in the text book.

18. Formulation of questions-problems and questions raised.

e.g. After reading a lesson the pupils are asked to raise related problems- questions.

19. New methods of procedure

e.g. Can you solve this mathematical problem by using another method?

Advantages of the Essay Tests:

1. It is relatively easier to prepare and administer a six-question extended- response essay test than to prepare and administer a comparable 60-item multiple-choice test items.

2. It is the only means that can assess an examinee’s ability to organise and present his ideas in a logical and coherent fashion.

3. It can be successfully employed for practically all the school subjects.

4. Some of the objectives such as ability to organise idea effectively, ability to criticise or justify a statement, ability to interpret, etc., can be best measured by this type of test.

5. Logical thinking and critical reasoning, systematic presentation, etc. can be best developed by this type of test.

6. It helps to induce good study habits such as making outlines and summaries, organising the arguments for and against, etc.

7. The students can show their initiative, the originality of their thought and the fertility of their imagination as they are permitted freedom of response.

8. The responses of the students need not be completely right or wrong. All degrees of comprehensiveness and accuracy are possible.

9. It largely eliminates guessing.

10. They are valuable in testing the functional knowledge and power of expression of the pupil.

Limitations of Essay Tests:

1. One of the serious limitations of the essay tests is that these tests do not give scope for larger sampling of the content. You cannot sample the course content so well with six lengthy essay questions as you can with 60 multiple-choice test items.

2. Such tests encourage selective reading and emphasise cramming.

3. Moreover, scoring may be affected by spelling, good handwriting, coloured ink, neatness, grammar, length of the answer, etc.

4. The long-answer type questions are less valid and less reliable, and as such they have little predictive value.

5. It requires an excessive time on the part of students to write; while assessing, reading essays is very time-consuming and laborious.

6. It can be assessed only by a teacher or competent professionals.

7. Improper and ambiguous wording handicaps both the students and valuers.

8. Mood of the examiner affects the scoring of answer scripts.

9. There is halo effect-biased judgement by previous impressions.

10. The scores may be affected by his personal bias or partiality for a particular point of view, his way of understanding the question, his weightage to different aspect of the answer, favouritism and nepotism, etc.

Thus, the potential disadvantages of essay type questions are :

(i) Poor predictive validity,

(ii) Limited content sampling,

(iii) Scores unreliability, and

(iv) Scoring constraints.

Suggestions for Improving Essay Tests:

The teacher can sometimes, through essay tests, gain improved insight into a student’s abilities, difficulties and ways of thinking and thus have a basis for guiding his/her learning.

(A) White Framing Questions:

1. Give adequate time and thought to the preparation of essay questions, so that they can be re-examined, revised and edited before they are used. This would increase the validity of the test.

2. The item should be so written that it will elicit the type of behaviour the teacher wants to measure. If one is interested in measuring understanding, he should not ask a question that will elicit an opinion; e.g.,

“What do you think of Buddhism in comparison to Jainism?”

3. Use words which themselves give directions e.g. define, illustrate, outline, select, classify, summarise, etc., instead of discuss, comment, explain, etc.

4. Give specific directions to students to elicit the desired response.

5. Indicate clearly the value of the question and the time suggested for answering it.

6. Do not provide optional questions in an essay test because—

(i) It is difficult to construct questions of equal difficulty;

(ii) Students do not have the ability to select those questions which they will answer best;

(iii) A good student may be penalised because he is challenged by the more difficult and complex questions.

7. Prepare and use a relatively large number of questions requiring short answers rather than just a few questions involving long answers.

8. Do not start essay questions with such words as list, who, what, whether. If we begin the questions with such words, they are likely to be short-answer question and not essay questions, as we have defined the term.

9. Adapt the length of the response and complexity of the question and answer to the maturity level of the students.

10. The wording of the questions should be clear and unambiguous.

11. It should be a power test rather than a speed test. Allow a liberal time limit so that the essay test does not become a test of speed in writing.

12. Supply the necessary training to the students in writing essay tests.

13. Questions should be graded from simple to complex so that all the testees can answer atleast a few questions.

14. Essay questions should provide value points and marking schemes.

(B) While Scoring Questions:

1. Prepare a marking scheme, suggesting the best possible answer and the weightage given to the various points of this model answer. Decide in advance which factors will be considered in evaluating an essay response.

2. While assessing the essay response, one must:

a. Use appropriate methods to minimise bias;

b. Pay attention only to the significant and relevant aspects of the answer;

c. Be careful not to let personal idiosyncrasies affect assessment;

d. Apply a uniform standard to all the papers.

3. The examinee’s identity should be concealed from the scorer. By this we can avoid the “halo effect” or “biasness” which may affect the scoring.

4. Check your marking scheme against actual responses.

5. Once the assessment has begun, the standard should not be changed, nor should it vary from paper to paper or reader to reader. Be consistent in your assessment.

6. Grade only one question at a time for all papers. This will help you in minimising the halo effect in becoming thoroughly familiar with just one set of scoring criteria and in concentrating completely on them.

7. The mechanics of expression (legibility, spelling, punctuation, grammar) should be judged separately from what the student writes, i.e. the subject matter content.

8. If possible, have two independent readings of the test and use the average as the final score.

Related Articles:

• Merits and Demerits of Objective Type Test
• Types of Recall Type Test: Simple and Completion | Objective Test

Educational Statistics , Evaluation Tools , Essay Test

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Essay assessments ask students to demonstrate a point of view supported by evidence. They allow students to demonstrate what they've learned and build their writing skills.

An essay question prompts a written response, which may vary from a few paragraphs to a number of pages.

Essay questions are generally open-ended. They differ from short answer questions in that they:

• require more time
• are less structured
• require students to integrate information and interpretation.

When to use an essay

Essays can be used to test students' higher order thinking.

Advantages and limitations

• Limitations
• Test analysis, reasoning, synthesis and evaluation skills.
• Are open ended. This allows students to answer the question in a variety of ways and demonstrate depth and creativity.
• Allow for deep learning and connections.
• Allow students to draw on research and reasoning to provide justification and show integration.
• Opportunity to assess a student’s writing ability.
• Can be quicker to prepare than other item/assessment types.
• Can be structured in different ways.
• Can limit the range of assessable content and the number of assessment items that can be used.
• Favour students with good writing skills.
• not too open ended
• align with content and learning outcomes.
• Can allow for plagiarism.
• Can be difficult to moderate.
• Time consuming to assess.
• Markers need to identify knowledge and understanding, despite levels of expression, i.e. elegant language can mask superficial thinking, while clumsy language can disguise understanding of ideas.

Guidelines for developing essay assessments

Essay question.

Effective essay questions provide students with a focus (types of thinking and content) to use in their response.

Make sure your essay question:

• is aligned with the intended learning outcome
• is an appropriate length
• contains a clear task or a specific problem situation
• is worded and structured in such a way that it will be clear to the students what they are expected to do
• is not indeterminate, vague or open to numerous and/or subjective interpretations
• contains verbs that match the intended learning outcomes (if you use verbs like discuss or explain , indicate which points should be discussed/explained)
• defines the scope of the task to avoid students going off on an unrelated tangent
• allows for answers at different levels, i.e. a basic, satisfactory response and an extended, high level response
• includes differentiating aspects in the way the question is written.

Review the question and improve using the following questions:

• Does the question align with the learning outcome?
• Is the focus clear?
• Is the scope specific and clear enough?
• Is there enough direction to guide the student to the expected response?

Alignment to learning outcomes

To ensure the assessment item aligns with learning outcomes:

• prepare a model answer or an outline of major points that should be included in the answer
• critically review the essay item for clarity
• check the question is aligned with the intended learning outcome and model answer.

Student preparation

Make sure your students are prepared by:

• teaching them how to approach essays
• scaffold learning so there are opportunities to guide and practise essay writing
• ensuring students know the recommended time for completing their answer
• ensuring students know the weighting of the essay.

Examples of essay question verbs

In the table below you will find lists of verbs that are commonly used in essay questions. These words:

• relate to learning outcomes
• can be thought of as aligning with critical essay questions or descriptive essay questions
• can be used as starting points for the development of essay questions.