Question: what do you test on

Clay Robinson answered on 25 Apr 2016:

This is a great and really challenging question; is it a test?
Writing a good test question is always difficult.
The teacher should think about several things, starting with what they expect a student to do with the material. Does the student just need to know the definition of a term, or maybe to compare and contrast it with another term, or describe how it fits into a process. Maybe the student needs to be able to use their understanding of the concept well enough to use it in solving a problem or designing and executing an experiment.
Based on what a student needs to know, the teacher next selects the kind of test question needed to demonstrate the student has that level of mastery of the topic: true-false, matching, define, describe, compare and contrast, short answer, essay, solve a problem, or other type of question.
So as a college professor, I could use the same question such as “How does soil form?” for a freshman class, a senior class, and a class for students working on a master’s or doctorate degree. I would expect freshman to list the five factors that influence soil formation, seniors to talk about the interactions among those five factors, and graduate students to list and explain the processes that occur during the interaction of those five factors.
At the beginning of a class I give students a syllabus that describes what we will do in the course and the learning objectives I expect them to master. I also provide preparation guides for each exam that explain what types of questions they should expect to reach the level of mastery I expect them to have for each concept.
I know this answer is much more about how I think about testing than what I test, but the material for each test varies according to the topic.
I teach courses in introductory soils, soil fertility and plant nutrition, soil and water conservation, soil formation and classification, soil profile description, and irrigation, among others. Each section of each class will have different learning objectives and different types of questions based on what I expect from the students.