Testing can cause anxiety for students and for the teacher. I’ve found a higher anxiety level when testing in an auditorium course like MMC 2100.

• Do I have enough copies of the test and of the Scantrons?
• Are all the questions clear? One poorly worded question could lead to more than 100 hands in the air as students would want clarification.
• Can we establish an atmosphere to discourage cheating?

All of those are the mechanics aside from how well the test is constructed and whether or not the is a reliable assessment of the students’ comprehension of the key ideas of the course.

Today was Quiz 1 in MMC 2100. I had extra copies of the quiz made — just in case. I had a new pack of Scantron forms. I had recruited four students from the Journalism and Communications Ambassadors to help proctor the quiz. All went smoothly.

After class, Paige, my lecture assistant, and I walked the quizzes over to the testing center for scoring — taking the Scantrons, the answer keys, a flash drive (for the digital grades for online posting), information about the test (number of items, etc.), and the billing numbers.

One quiz down — three quizzes and two exams to go.