TESTING EXAMINATIONS

In the midst of "April Hours", the news of any new type of examination, different from the present one, is heard with hopeful curiosity. At Yale, and several other colleges, objective tests have been substituted in some subjects for the kind now used, so that instead of writing an examination composed of brief essays, the student is given at least forty questions, each to be answered in a few seconds. Aside from the time obviously saved, both in writing and correcting these papers, the system is of advantage to the sincere student, since it practically eliminates bluffing, the chief resource of the unprepared. The personal equation is also abolished. With only right and wrong to choose from, two instructors must mark a given paper in the same way.

The greatest defect is that the student is called upon merely to recognize material and master detailed information, instead of to draw conclusions from the facts learned. And there is no refutation for the argument that the old style of examination is valuable in requiring understanding as well as memory.

Hence, the main point emphasized is that the purpose of the new method is to supplement, not supplant, the old. The Department of Psychology at Yale after some experimentation, has adopted a plan whereby an examination is made up of two sets of questions of the objective type, to count one-third or one-half of the total mark, and a third division, containing old-style questions, to count two-thirds or one-half, as the case may be. In this way the originators hope to combine the advantages of both methods.

Yale's experiment is merely the formal recognition of a principle that has been gaining strength with thoughtful examiners everywhere. The best teachers in the University, consciously or unconsciously, divide their examinations into questions of the two types. The professor who is really concerned with making his quizzes something more than perfunctory tests, or snares and pitfalls for the unprepared, has already discovered and adopted this idea. But for others, who give less attention to the mechanics of their courses, some such arbitrary distinction might be useful.