multiple choice questions and answers

multiple choice questions and answers

Effective Strategies for Creating Multiple Choice Questions and Answers

1. Introduction to Multiple Choice Questions

A multiple choice question is one that asks a student to select a correct answer from among a set of options provided. Multiple choice items are a neat, concise, and flexible way of assessing understanding where the possible response options are more clearly functional. This article deals with strategies for implementing a group of multiple choice questions in an effective and efficient manner. Effective use of multiple choice questions can be made when students are provided with time to reach a careful, full answer with respect to an educational experience. When writing for educational purposes, most teachers need to ponder the recurring theme of ‘testing students’.

There’s growing interest in the ability of a good teacher to implement new and effective teaching and learning strategies. Currently, the assessment and evaluation of student learning have become important and a fundamental part of the student learning process. These assessment and evaluation processes are aimed at assessing students’ levels of understanding and analyzing the quality of teaching and learning activities. In this article, I will present an opinion on multiple choice items and how to use them effectively. Moreover, strategies for resources and possible ways will be organized to implement these strategies more effectively.

2. Writing Clear and Concise Questions

Of course, without any doubt, the goal is to provide clear and concise questions. When using multiple-choice questions in your assessment, you want to avoid at all costs that any student understands the question when they create their response. However, writing questions is not that simple and solving this challenge involves practice but also a little bit of science. There are two fundamental principles that you should then always put in practice when developing multiple choice question. Be clear and be concise. Formulate the stem and the stimuli of the question in clear language. Be concise. Provide the minimal information for a clear understanding.

Writing quiz questions can be overwhelming, but it can be manageable. This brief tutorial provides common strategies on how to use various techniques to create multiple choice questions that would assess student understanding of a variety of key lower-level concepts. The tutorial is organized in four sections, plus several appendices. The first section will provide a few guidelines and suggestions for writing clear and concise questions. The second section will list a variety of strategies to create high-quality responses. The third section addresses other strategies to deepen the cognitive complexity of your questions. The fourth section introduces a few innovative question types, such as logic-proof questions, point-and-click questions, and parameterized questions.

3. Constructing Distractors and Answer Choices

Distractors are thus clearly integral to MC questions. But when it’s time to prepare an exam, constructing effective endpoints can be a challenge. Indeed, teachers who recognize the vital contribution of MC questions to good teaching can usually generate a clear, serviceable array of possible alternatives without much effort. Crafting four really first-rate opening answers poses most of the difficulty and demands the most effort. It’s not rare to find a very well-constructed question that can’t quite be used for this reason. Entire books have been written on constructing MC questions, but surprisingly little of that content addresses the nuts and bolts of the process from which most teachers have to manage – primary question construction. This chapter, then, is quite practical. It deals with the two most fundamental and challenging tasks associated with using MC questions: developing the answer choices and the question stem. And, in the final section which deals with computerized testing, the same strategy for preparing questions is invoked.

Question construction refers to the creation and assembly of the items, and often commands the most attention. Constructing an MC question involves much more than simply writing a question stem and then copying down textual material to pose as alternatives. It’s the distractors that provoke reflection and thinking, compel students to consciously weigh the merits of a position, enable teachers to measure whether students are acquiring the desired body of knowledge and growing in understanding, and otherwise allow the MC question to become a pedagogically rich tool. The quality of the construct thus determines the quality of the inferences that can be drawn from the responses.

4. Designing Effective Answer Keys

Once your panel is established, lead them through a process of constructing a reliable, valid answer key. Start by instructing the entire group that they are being asked for quantity rather than quality as incorrect responses will not be evaluated in this session. Explain that your main objectives at this point are to: 1) identify those facts and concepts that the question writer feels are most likely to be encountered as incorrect responses, 2) review those items and identify if any of them are the same or identical to the correct response, and 3) determine if correct prepositional phrases and the proper tenses are used consistently for the correct and incorrect alternatives. Finally, make it clear to the panel that you are conducting the analyses so that appropriate summer test preparation materials can be created rather than to assess the ultimate merits of the full concept representation of the items.

First, develop a list of possible questions (without looking at your course notes or any other sources where the answers might be found to prevent involving your own knowledge in the process). Then convene a panel of at least two other knowledgeable experts who are not involved in teaching the material or the actual production of the test. Make sure that your panel includes those from both a content and testing background.

The key to creating quality answer keys, and thus reliable tests, is a meticulous validation process that uses a panel of well-informed experts. Unfortunately, most test developers skip this important step. Instead of using a panel approach, they write the items in isolation and then “validate” them themselves, usually by taking a stab at the questions and then looking up the answers. This approach is clearly inadequate. Instead, you should use the following expert panel approach to creating all of your answer keys.

5. Tips for Administering and Analyzing Multiple Choice Assessments

When administering multiple-choice examinations, teachers emphasize that guessing is the best policy if the student does not know an answer. Guessing is not an effective strategy with constructed response and essay questions. A student with no knowledge of the answer is as likely to get the question correct as a student with some knowledge. However, a student must carefully analyze each question and its possible answers before making a selection. A mnemonic device that is useful in this regard is ‘Fudd.’ If a student does not know the answer, the following guidelines are presented. First, if there is only one correct answer and the alternatives contain words such as all, every, never, none, always, or only, another alternative should be chosen. Next, if none of the above or all of the above appear, one of these alternatives is likely to be the correct answer. If all of the answers appear equally likely, the student should choose the longest answer. If all the answers are the same length, the student should choose the final alternative. After making selections and completing these simple steps, the student should return to evaluate the questions that caused the most confusion.

After creating multiple choice examinations, teachers should offer students some tips for taking the tests. Here are some suggestions. Explain to students why you use multiple choice exams. For example, one reason could be that they cover course material evenly, and thus, they force students to study a wide scope of information. A key strategy for taking this style of test is to carefully read all of the answers. If there are one or two answers that the student is certain about, they should be considered when evaluating the relative merit of the other answers. If they are negatively phrased or make no sense, they are likely to be incorrect. If there is a question that the student cannot answer, the confusion should not stop the student from moving on to the remaining questions.