Which Shall I Choose?

Chapter 6- Writing Selection Items- Multiple-Choice

Summary: Multiple-choice test questions are great for testing learning and usually give the students a %25 percent chance at getting the right answer. Multiple-choice questions consist of a stem, alternatives, and distractors (questions, answer, wrong answers). Each of these plays an important role in the assessment and should be used most effectively. There are many things to keep in mind while writing these questions and making sure they are effectively measuring the targeted learning outcomes. These tests questions should be clear to the students, with answers that are usually much shorter than the questions. Grammar should be of upmost importance and negatives should usually be avoided. If a student does not know the answer, they should not be able to guess too easily what the right answer would be just based off the wording, the length of answers, or any other type of pattern. All in all, it is up to the teacher on how he or she would like to construct the questions, but in order to make them most effective, it is best to follow the guidelines.

Reflection: The only reason that I have a problem with multiple-choice questions is because I feel like they do not show me what the student is thinking and I wonder often if they guessed the right answer or they actually knew it. Setting up the questions myself however, would help me feel more at ease about how the questions are presented and what the students can show me that they know. If I follow the guidelines given in this book, I think I will have a better feeling about multiple-choice test questions and their effectiveness.