Completion and short answer items measure knowledge, application of facts, theories, and principles by having students answer fill-in-the-blank or short answer questions. They can be easy to write but time consuming to score due to subjective nature of scoring and possibility of unintended responses. Scoring issues include partially correct answers, spelling errors, and determining credit for answers that are right but not what teacher intended.

1. Completion and Short Answer Items

2. Knowledge and application of facts, theories, or principles Interpretation of data or comprehension of information Effectively measures the following: Also called supplied or constructed response

3. Answer Completion Short Answer

4. Completion Short Answer The first traffic light in the US was invented by _____. Who invented the first traffic light in the US?

5. Advantages

6. can be written fairly easy easy to score faster to answer provide a wide sampling of content possibility of guessing is reduced

7. Limitations

8. time consuming to score subjective nature can be made in scoring hard to assess higher order thinking skills Hard to write because they can fill the blank with unintended responses

9. Issues in Scoring

10. 1. How to score answers that are correct but not the ones the teacher was looking for. Whether to award partial credit for questions in which the student correctly supplies the word to fill one blank while producing an incorrect response for a second blank in the same sentence.

11. 3. The teacher should decide and inform the students if errors in spelling will be penalized. Poor student writing “ that’s what I meant” afraid to respond because embarrassed by spelling