Week 5 ~ Writing Multiple Choice Questions

This week's resources were all about writing multiple choice question. While I was reading the resources on writing good multiple choice questions I thought about all the multiple choice tests I have taken over the years. There were a lot, as a student I like multiple choice tests the best as I am sure most students do, but I also started thinking about it as a teacher. As a teacher, I would assume that grading multiple choice tests is easier especially if they use scantron to give their tests. Reading the article Ten Rules for Writing Multiple Choice Questions made me realize that a lot of the tests I have taken broke quite a few of those rules. Many of the tests used "None of the above" or "All of the above" and usually the answer was one of those. After a while, if I saw one of those was an answer I usually picked that one. I could see how putting that could also break the rule to not trick students. A teacher could put a few "None of the above" questions in the test where that was the answer and then put some in where it is not the answer.

The resource Writing Multiple-Choice Test Items talked writing good stem questions. I have never really thought about giving more information to the question instead of the potential answers. When I think about it that does make sense. If you want to test a students comprehension or critical thinking you would give the students the most information up front, let them reason it out. By giving them the word and having them match it to the definition is just testing if they can remember and recall information. That is not learning it is just memorizing. 

I have never thought to write multiple choice questions that test comprehension because it is easier to write them to test if the students can memorize the information and then spit it out at a later date. As a teacher, we owe it to our students to make sure that they are getting the most out of their education. We give that to them by teaching them comprehension techniques and making sure they actually know the information after they leave our classroom, and don't learn it just to pass a test and then forget it.