Predicting the difficulty of automatic item generators on exams from their difficulty on homeworks

Abstract

To design good assessments, it is useful to have an estimate of the difficulty of a novel exam question before running an exam. In this paper, we study a collection of a few hundred automatic item generators (short computer programs that generate a variety of unique item instances) and show that their exam difficulty can be roughly predicted from student performance on the same generator during pre-exam practice. Specifically, we show that the rate that students correctly respond to a generator on an exam is on average within 5% of the correct rate for those students on their last practice attempt. This study is conducted with data from introductory undergraduate Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering courses.