MCQ Best Practice

Wednesday, 9 September, 2015

Following up on the last blog post, Donald also has a great post on the 10 stupidest mistakes in multiple choice question design. Everyone ends up doing MCQs at some point simply because they are easy to set, provide rapid feedback and marking can be automated (or largely automated). But, in order to boost learning you need to design them well - the first and most important is “test understanding, not facts”. Good one, but it takes effort to do this and we are all guilty of testing facts at times.

There are two are posts worth looking at in conjunction with this. The first is “10 essential points on use of open-response questions”. Open response questions can be far more effective than MCQs, yet in many situations you can still automate marking and provide detailed feedback.

And finally….. All of the Above - 20 ways to cheat Multiple Choice questions. Given how poor many tests are, use this tips to either write better tests or get better results!

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