At the click of a button, item analysis gives you exam statistics for all self-graded quiz or exam questions. Item analysis will show you:
- your classes’ overall performance on the exam
- student performance on individual test questions
This data will help you identify questions in your exam that are poor discriminators—the ones that differentiate between students who know the subject matter those who do not. Once you have this data, you can rework the “poor” questions to improve your exam in the future, or possibly give your students a few bonus points on the current exam attempt.
Most importantly, if most of your students are falling short on a well written exam question that is tied to one of your learning objectives, you will likely need to find another way to support learning that content.
To access item analysis: Go to Full Grade Center and navigate to the Grade Center column for the test.
- Go to Full Grade Center.
- Go to the Grade Center column for the test and select the test column’s edit menu
- Select Item Analysis.
- In the Select Test drop-down list, select a test (Only deployed tests are listed) and click Run.
- View the item analysis by selecting the new report’s link under the Available Analysis heading or by selecting View Analysis in the status receipt at the top of the page.
Here is a detailed explanation and a video on how to use the Item Analysis tool from the Blackboard website.