ap world history multiple choice questions

ap world history multiple choice questions

Developing Effective Multiple Choice Questions for AP World History Exams

1. Introduction to Multiple Choice Questions in AP World History

The most important aspect in creating effective multiple-choice questions is to be certain that the questions provide clear, accurate, and valid information of a student’s mastery of knowledge and comprehension of crucial learning goals. These goals should be derived from state and district standards, course goals, and intended learning objectives, not just recall of a historical fact. Furthermore, students should be required to answer more difficult questions requiring a more developed understanding of careful reasoning and effective explanation, not just providing a simple one-word response. Also, great care should be used in crafting plausible distractors. Too often, students with a very superficial understanding of the historical narrative can look at a group of events or terms and choose the correct response without any deep understanding of the historical meaning.

Developing effective multiple choice questions for AP World History exams is perhaps of greatest importance in the implementation of world history curricula. The advantages are substantial, making world history available to all students with the capacity to master an advanced placement exam. In addition, a test item is relatively inexpensive to purchase and can be handled by a computer. This is not the case for more comprehensive tests designed to measure a broad range of cognitive and critical thinking skills. Finally, a simple multiple-choice test can be scored automatically, saving teachers time to work with students rather than sifting through and grading a number of incorrect or off-target short answers.

2. Strategies for Crafting High-Quality AP World History Questions

A crucial part of creating high-quality multiple-choice questions for the AP World History exam lies in crafting effective, yet challenging, response options. When thoughtful consideration is given to the wording of the distractors and their relationship to the content, the question can help ascertain students’ understanding of the historical, factual knowledge and enumerated concepts from the course framework. The correct answer for a task should be the single best, most plausible response, and other choices must reflect students’ “misconceptions” in order to truly be plausible. All response options should be of similar grammatical structure and expression as the provided information.

The selection of question text is crucial to developing high-quality multiple-choice items for the AP World History exam. As simple as it may seem, item writers should begin by writing the intended correct answer, as appropriate answer choices should align with that response. As such, items should be developed within the bounds of a passage or stimulus, carefully using the only essential information from the source text. Additionally, AP World History exam questions must focus on the body of historical knowledge as part of the course framework the exam represents.

3. Common Pitfalls to Avoid in Writing AP World History Multiple Choice Questions

In pairs of questions testing the same skill, avoid asking the same question, particularly if the answer to the first can serve as an implicit hint to the second. This can be annoying to students and subverts the diagnostic function of the question. When reuse must occur, it is best accomplished when the part of the question or the distractors are different, not identical. In rare cases when a student intentionally attempts to “game” the system by supplying a different answer to the increased question, when reuse must occur, it is best accomplished when the part of the question or the distractors are different, not identical.

Avoid the use of “strictly except” as an option. Often, an answer choice will mention many correct alternatives but include one incorrect option that invalidates it. Including “strictly except” options in all questions that have multiple possible correct answers is of debatable importance. They are very difficult to write and usually detract from the cognitive content of the question. To avoid invalid options, skillful writing is required, not “strictly except” options.

4. Best Practices for Administering and Analyzing AP World History Multiple Choice Exams

Post Analysis: always administer an item analysis. The true educational reward from scoring a multiple choice test is not simply assigning credit but finally analyzing student performance after the test. These tests take a great deal of time and mental energy to create, administer, and evaluate. Provocative and beneficial educational assessment in the classroom is by nature iterative; item analysis performed utilizing College Board as well as university-created tools can provide valuable feedback on student exam.

Accentuate the item analysis data by scoring the test in computerized software which identifies item analysis. Of great importance to the teacher who values test development and reinforced by multiple choice item analysis which highlights defective questions, the challenge that clustering symptoms poses — the demonstration that students directly correlate any question fatigue note — can and should be overcome. Clearly identifying each of the student and item positions, I then use the remaining section to apply College Board’s certified ten-minute action question for returned AP student answer sheets. The item analysis report produced yields the utility of readily available student performance for analyzing AP student test data.

For grading, have a system for handling student mark errors. While experienced classroom management will mitigate the number of student scan sheet mark errors, unalterable mistakes will inevitably happen on test day. These mistakes range from placing answers in the wrong section to aligning the answer key bubbles out of sync and selecting student responses inaccurately. While I tutor scan sheet completion meticulously and aid students with grade-changing requests, many simply fail to verify the registration data.

Given my commitment to hindering student cheating, the third test question on the form is the key. The form uniquely matches the three digits from the test card. With this key close at hand, I can examine all key #3 student responses. So, when I score the test and collect key #3 errors, the student responses can be matched against other students, thereby evaluating the impact of item discrimination by scanning the responses from the other students who did or did not correctly answer the question.

If multiple versions of the test were utilized, take action by quickly and easily zoning in on the problem question. Fascinating results are in store when this system is administered after the test. Like most teachers, I am meticulous in assigning students test versions in a predetermined random pattern. However, in the fall during the first student test and not all that infrequently in the spring, I make two mistakes.

Keep the test key handy while scoring the scan sheets. If a student has placed an ambiguous or persuasive choice mark on the answer form, tutor towards the answer that most closely approximates an exact match before scoring. This process is particularly critical for teachers who manually correct a student’s ambiguous test score, since the College Board scoring will not attempt to persuade a scan sheet score artificially in the student’s favor.

So you’ve developed a great set of questions and managed to administer your AP World History multiple choice exam properly — now what? To ensure a useful scoring experience, critical attention must be paid to the process of assessing the scan sheets, including the requisite analysis of student performance after the test. I have found the following data management strategies particularly effective in evaluating student performance against the multiple choice exam.