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[Frumple]

Dunno if I'd call that a problem, really. Making the student have to pay a bit of attention is kinda' the point...

[itisnotlogical]

No, the point is that if you know the material then you can satisfactorily answer the question. Using tricky wording or witholding information or presenting extremely similar answers is a dick move and has nothing to do with the subject matter.

[Frumple]

... no, it's one of the better ways of making sure the test taker actually knows the material and isn't just able to answer it satisfactorily despite not. Least that I've actually encountered. Stuff that's easy to skim over and still answer correctly only occasionally needs you to particularly know what the material was, heh.

[Neonivek]

... no, it's one of the better ways of making sure the test taker actually knows the material and isn't just able to answer it satisfactorily despite not. Least that I've actually encountered. Stuff that's easy to skim over and still answer correctly only occasionally needs you to particularly know what the material was, heh.

So constant trick/vague questions with answers that sort of blend together... Shows whether or not someone knows the answer?

I think it is better to just know your questions a lot better and make sure that for multiple choice the questions cannot be intuited just by the set up.

Heliophile and Psychrophile do not have intuitive definitions other than "phile" (No Heliophile isn't "Loves the sun")

And yes! Psychrophile is one of the coolest names for something that is... pretty mundane.

---

I mean... "Which of these carries a negative charge"
1) Protons
2) Neutrons
3) Electrons
4) Photons (I can't think of a reasonable 4th one)

Is a fine question (albeit for a rather remedial test... and I am not sure what I wrote is correct).

Clear question, clear choices... The choices can be similar ("Which Primape has a social structure most similar to humans?"), but you shouldn't be confused as to what a question is asking and what the answers signify.

If you are meant to come up with an answer based on a unclear question (critical thinking) or vague answers... then perhaps this question shouldn't be multiple choice.

[Flying Dice]

Multiple choice is an absolute joke. Most question structures immediately eliminate one or two answers simply through logical examination of the options, and if you know anything at all about the question's subject matter you can usually get the right answer in <20s. If you don't, either you'll be given the answer in the text of a later question or will have a 50% shot at the guess. The most important thing is to not second-guess, your gut is often right.

And that's not even approaching things like the ACT science section; I remember nailing a perfect score on that after 2h of sleep because it was literally all "look at table/graph/chart, locate piece of data, select matching answer". Some big question about orbital mechanics that people freaked out over, same thing, look at a table and find the right cell. Total nonsense, didn't test a single thing beyond your basic reading comprehension.

[Bumber]

("Which Primape has a social structure most similar to humans?")

a) Mankey
b) Primeape
c) Infernape
d) Jigglypuff seen from above

[Rolan7]

Multiple choice is an absolute joke. Most question structures immediately eliminate one or two answers simply through logical examination of the options, and if you know anything at all about the question's subject matter you can usually get the right answer in <20s. If you don't, either you'll be given the answer in the text of a later question or will have a 50% shot at the guess. The most important thing is to not second-guess, your gut is often right.

And that's not even approaching things like the ACT science section; I remember nailing a perfect score on that after 2h of sleep because it was literally all "look at table/graph/chart, locate piece of data, select matching answer". Some big question about orbital mechanics that people freaked out over, same thing, look at a table and find the right cell. Total nonsense, didn't test a single thing beyond your basic reading comprehension.

It's one thing if you can answer the questions with no actual understanding of the data like that.  That's just bad test writing, worse than anything I experienced.
But I don't think it's so bad for a test to reward fast reasoning.  Like Neo pointed out, sometimes test questions would imply things I hahd forgotten in later questions - I went back and used that information, and I think that was fair.  Particularly under strict time limits.  Comprehension under pressure is far more important than rote memorization, particularly as technology has made it easier and easier to access reference material.

Why test memorization of formulae that are half a second away, without even using a mouse, if you know how to look?
Not that you were defending rote memorization, I'm just speaking up for quick comprehension and reasoning as valid skills (perhaps the most important).

[Flying Dice]

No, we're in agreement on that. It's a big part of why a lot of higher education has shifted away from the English model even more in the internet age, because you're beyond even the point of "I don't need to have all this shit memorized, I have a shelf full of books that I can refer to" and can conduct the same reference without even standing up, provided you have access to the proper tools.

That said, it's not really productive to praise standardized testing for unintentionally testing for critical thinking skills and reading comprehension when the truth is that it's actually an attempt to dumb down education to the point where you have to be legitimately trying to fail to do so. Even then-I had a classmate back then who, as a joke, went for wrong answers deliberately and guessed on the ones he didn't know. He was only a couple points under the mean composite score. I'm absolute rubbish at maths, used logical deduction and guessing on ~four fifths of the questions, and still managed to land in the mid-80th percentile on that section.

To reiterate: the ACT is a joke. The SAT isn't any better, save that if you can't afford tutoring and guides you're going to score lower, so it's a good way to test how rich your family is and whether you need to work when you're not in school instead of extra studying and time with a bored uni student. And then you get towards the end of your undergraduate work, take the GRE, and it's almost embarrassingly easy. Turns out that all you need to do to prove readiness for grad school is be able to write a couple brief, basic essays about a straightforward real-world prompt.

Like good fucking god, every year I was telling myself "this time it's going to be different, this time I won't be able to screw off and still pass everything with flying colors", and it never fucking changed. I'm a few months away from my Master's and I'm still yet to encounter anything that seriously pushed me. Not because I'm brilliant, I ain't, but because standards are so goddamn low across the board that you can take a shit on a sheet of paper and be praised for it. Thank goodness I didn't decide to go the  other route and aim for a doctorate, I would have killed myself of boredom before the crushing student loan debt bumped me off or idiot undergrads drove me to drink. Between the rock-bottom standards, bountiful egos, increasingly ill-boding public perception, rising difficulty of reaching tenure, and ongoing infiltration of ideologically driven wonks, so goddamn happy I'm bailing out of academia. Trying for a full professorship would have been hell on Earth.

[Rolan7]

That said, it's not really productive to praise standardized testing for unintentionally testing for critical thinking skills and reading comprehension when the truth is that it's actually an attempt to dumb down education to the point where you have to be legitimately trying to fail to do so.

Heh, yeah, it's unintended.  I assume educators are generally aware of it now, but it certainly wasn't the original intention.
The intention is probably dealing with huge class sizes (on a class level) and also comparing schools in a standardized way on the state level.  Grading math exams at university suuucked, but they paid me well even as an undergraduate to help, because universities have budget for that.  Doesn't help the poor SOB teaching civics in a trailer at some underfunded high school...

(Pretty sure we're still in agreement, I'm just reminiscing)

[MaximumZero]

And here I am, stuck with an Associate's degree and nowhere to use it. Can't go for a Bachelor's. Can't afford it. Overqualified for every job under the sun that doesn't require a Bachelor's or some kind of special training or certification, and therefore unemployable by 99% of places that I've applied to.

(My apologies for bitching, but I'm kind of frustrated with the workforce for the commonfolk. Here it's either heavy manual labor (which is nigh impossible with health problems like mine,) or entry level customer service, which I'm too qualified to do. I have a job again, but it's only 7 hours a week.)

[Flying Dice]

No, it's completely fucked. 95% of jobs don't need any higher education, just basic intelligence and a decent high-school education. Most aren't even appreciably improved by it beyond the gain from the traditional liberal arts core stuff re: critical thinking, logical reasoning, writing skills, &c., which ought to be in public education but isn't. But the fuckers in that initial generation that benefited massively in their career prospects from university created the expectation that everyone goes to university, and we all know the story from there.

These days, in the states at least, you're paying through the nose solely to tick off that "Bachelor's" line on your resume so that it doesn't get binned when you apply for real jobs. You're probably better off financially either going into a high-paying-due-to-conditions job like working your way up on river barge-pushers until you have the hours to sit for your first merchant marine license, working a cruise ship, &c.; or going to trade school, at least until the latter eventually get fucked by all products being blackboxed Smart Bullshit.

[Rolan7]

That's SO right.  I've seen so many people forced into college too early, because that's the "path to success".  Which is ironically a self-fulfilling prophecy... except that tons of people drop out, and many more rack up huge debt.  And yeah, things that should be general education naturally migrate into the low end of "higher" education.

[Flying Dice]

What the fuck did Google do to YT now? Video play bar is broken, a second one not in the YT style is sporadically appearing below it, but disappears on mouse-over. Clearing YT cookies fixed it. I don't even.

[ein]

i was eating crackers with peanut butter and accidentally dropped my cracker into the jar

good job, me

[Reelya]

Just crush it up and now you have crunchy peanut butter.