Constructing Exams In constructing exam questions, do you focus on the content and construct a realistic setting for the questions or do you start with a real problem and try to match the course content? In other words, how much do you strive to use real data as opposed to hypothetical or realistic data in the exam questions?

In constructing the exam, how do you decide how many points a question should be worth? What percentage of the points on the exam would you say are for primarily conceptual knowledge/interpretation vs. calculation/mechanics?

Usually I start by thinking about which topics I want to cover. I have given students a detailed review sheet and I use that as a guide of topics to choose from. I also spend some time looking through test banks and previous exams. I'm always searching for interesting, current contexts and continue to use genuine data as much as possible. Once I have the context/scenario, I continually refine the statistical content that I want to assess. I try to make sure the points given to a problem are proportionate to the amount of time it should take them to complete. I hope at least half the points are conceptual over mechanical. I also try to make sure that even when there are multiple parts to a question, later parts can still be answered even if earlier ones cannot. I hope this reduces the number of distinct contexts students need to read through to help with the time constraints.

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