How to know our exams are testing what we think?

The Chemistry Teaching Team is doing scholarship of teaching research that involves assessing the quality and the value of exams in first year chemistry across four subjects and taking in account a range of predictors of success such as gender, pre-subject preparation, and served course. That is, we research the validity of exams, and learn about the exam questions themselves, and about student performance. But there is some controversy around exams: are exams a valid assessment tool? As academics we are always pushed to reduce the length and number of exams. There seems to be contrasting opinions on the effectiveness of exams to measure student learning.

This roundtable will be a structured conversation about exams. Do exams measure student learning? Do your exams measure student learning? What evidence do you have of the effectiveness of your exams to measure student learning? What are the advantages of using exams? Disadvantages? How could your exams be improved? What other ways are there to measure understanding of content knowledge? Are exams usable as a single point of assessments, or must they be part of a larger strategy? Is ranking student performance important? This roundtable will explore participants' thoughts and experiences related to such questions for their subjects.

We expect that contributions from a range of disciplines will provide a rich and meaningful set of views and practices to this question.