
TRADITIONAL TESTS
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Fill-ins, true/false, short answers and essays; multiple-choice with right/wrong options
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Familiar presentation of material
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Prediction and matching
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Regurgitation of information and labeling of concepts
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Fact recall: answers are in head
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Tests storage capacity (bytes)
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ROM (long-term memory)
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Discrete units of information
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Hippocampus and cortex
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Raw scores are rarely adjusted
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75% is average score; 50% is failure
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Strongly favors dedicated students who have a good rapport with their teachers and demonstrate higher social-emotional intelligence
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Often favors aural and visual learners or those who can adapt to teacher's style of instruction
STANDARDIZED TESTS
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Multiple-choice with better/worse options using reversed-engineered questions and formulaic distracters
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Unfamiliar presentation of material
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Comparison and elimination
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Application of information and connecting of concepts
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Problem-solving: answers are in test
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Tests processing speed (bitrate)
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RAM (short-term/working memory)
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Dynamic connections of information
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Prefrontal lobe and cortex
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Raw scores are scaled (normalized)
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50% is average or 50th percentile score
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Not strongly correlated with IQ, GPA, academic success in traditional classes or social-emotional intelligence
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Strongly favors logical, visual, verbal, and/or solitary learners (a minority) over aural, physical, and social learners (the majority)