Measureablely Learned

I took my first English exam today. I think I did okay with the exception of a fill in the blank section. Our professor, one of the most energetic and engaging professors I think I may have ever had, put a fill in the blank section on our exam because she felt it required students to actually have the tested information in their brains completely with full comprehension. Multiple choice questions only tested recognition, not cognition, and our class period isn't even an hour, making it far too short to have essays that aren't incomprehensible paper-vomit.

I agree with her that multiple choice questions only scratch the surface of actual comprehension. In a way, I'm always a little sad when professors rely on them so much for so called 'higher learning'. But at the same time I think fill in the blank questions are pretty bunky too. I lost somewhere between 16 and 20 points on questions that I feel like I comprehended everything but the verbatim word blurped out of the sentence. I don't like it. And then again at the same time, I can't think of any real way I could test students if I was a teacher, that would guarantee that they were comprehending and capable of using anything I was testing them on... forget only having 50 minutes to do it in. I would hope that teachers get studies and whatnot on what people say is the most effective... if I had to teach this conundrum would drive me bonkers.