Lower-Learning Skills

As I prepare to write and give final exams I have been thinking about the ACS Standardized Exams.  In my department, we give them to provide some assessment in our courses.  This means that my two semester organic class will take the ACS exam as their final.  The problem I have had with the ACS exams for organic majors courses and higher level courses is that they are multiple choice only.  Even Wikipedia recognizes the disadvantages of multiple choice exams the major of which is noted in the quote below.

Multiple choice tests are best adapted for testing well-defined or lower-order skills. Problem-solving and higher-order reasoning skills are better assessed through short-answer and essay tests.

As we are pushed to standardized assessments we move away from the very concept of "higher" education.  Multiple choice standardized exams are about lower order skills.  Most importantly we need to spread the word that these tests are not really appropriate by themselves for high school let alone college.

If we are going to train true scientists capable of addressing fundamental questions in graduate school or in careers as science professionals we need to get beyond the multiple choice exam.  The SAT, MCAT, and GRE exams all have non-multiple choice parts.  We could create our own non-multiple choice questions, but with the ACS exams coming in at 2 hours and the typical final exam time at 2 hours there is no time for the non-multiple choice exam component.  If the ACS exams were designed to be something more on the order of 75 minutes we would have the ability of go beyond lower order skills testing.

T.S. Hall