As an instructional designer, you’ll frequently have the task of assessing whether your courses have met their instructional objectives. Typically, trainers consider several parameters to judge the outcome of a course – course completion, engagement, interaction with fellow learners, assignment quality and timeliness, etc. However, a learners’ performance on tests is often an important benchmark for determining course effectiveness. How trainers and course designers develop those test questions is, therefore, critical. Testing a Broad Spectrum of Intellectual Accomplishments The key to writing effective test questions is in developing them so they assess a broad spectrum of intellectual understanding of the course content. It is important to test all six levels of that understanding, as espoused by Bloom’s Taxonomy: Knowledge Comprehension Application Analysis Synthesis, and Evaluation …with knowledge being the lowest level of understanding, and evaluation … [Read more...] about Ten Rules for Writing Effective Test Questions