Abstract:
In two of five semesters students from a junior-senior level crop production course were provided written lecture objectives at the beginning of each new major subject category. Students were informed that the majority of test questions from lectures would be based on data and concepts specified in the lecture objectives. Throughout the study period approximately 20 percent of the questions were identical or nearly identical. The remaining questions were changed because of updated course material and/or because an item analysis indicated something was wrong with the question. This study examined whether scores achieved on (i) identical or nearly identical questions, and (ii) all questions, differed when students were/were not provided lecture objectives.
The mean of each question was calculated and statistically compared by a standard t test. The means and standard deviations for similar or identical questions based on lecture objectives were 81.4 and 11.9 as compared to 68.8 and 18.0, respectively, when students did not have lecture objectives. The difference was significant at the 1 percent level. Students provided with lecture objectives also received higher mean scores on all multiple choice questions. These differences indicated that students provided with lecture objectives achieved higher scores on verbatim-type responses than students who did not have access to lecture objectives.
Keywords:
tests, lecture notes, verbatim-type responses, test scores
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