How To Write Better Multiple-Choice Exams?
Multiple-choice exams have many beneficial impacts on teachers and students alike. They are easy to grade and allow for the use of machines instead of hand grading. They also allow for a larger range of topics covered in a single sitting.
Multiple-choice exams can also provide easily calculated statistics that can be used to further improve teaching methods. However, they have one major downfall. This being that with multiple-choice exams it is easy for students to simply memorize certain facts instead of learning to apply the information.
This is preventable however, with well-written questions and answer choices that are easy to understand for students and challenging enough to make students apply their knowledge instead of memorizing facts. This can be done in several ways, each one with its own set of pros and cons depending on how it is used.
These ways include asking direct questions, offering responses that are close to the correct question with little detail, creating obvious problems with each question, and creating situations that allow students to use the information to answer questions instead of simply memorizing the information.
While making a multiple-choice exam may seem daunting the payouts of using multiple-choice exams is worth the effort when you can grade quicker and reuse questions, allowing you more time to do other tasks. It is also easier to prevent cheating and copying of answers when you can simply change the order each question comes independent on the test. Multiple-choice exams are significantly more beneficial than written exams once you know how to create them.
How to Improve Your Multiple-Choice Questions?
The most difficulty in creating a multiple-choice exam comes when creating questions for the exam. This is the moment where you ensure that your students are learning instead of memorizing. One notable method to use in preventing this is to ask direct questions.
Instead of asking: The color of the curtains was…
Ask: What color were the curtains?
This makes the student quickly come to an answer while also making the student learn the material instead of memorizing a simple note they made or statements they heard from the teacher’s mouth.
This method is often recommended by experts for this reason. It also prevents the use of irrelevant information and allows the student to practice picking out key information when studying instead of less important information.
These questions allow for both your ability to test your student’s actual knowledge and your student’s ability to recognize essential information when taking notes and studying. Teaching skills such as note-taking and critical thinking if often more important than the subject matter to students who will need them in the future.
Knowing how to recognize valuable information when given a large quantity of information is a skill that people of all careers will need and should be a behavior that is encouraged especially when taking an exam. By using this method, you are encouraging healthy study habits and active listening skills that are useful to your students no matter what background they come from and what future they aspire to have.
Another area of difficulty for those who choose to create multiple-choice exams is creating answer choices. Fixing this problem is rather simple and quick. Using the order in which you taught the subject, you should create options that are similar to the correct answer to the question while avoiding significant use of detail.
For example,
Instead of asking a generalized question such as: What is this story about? and listing several similar but detailed options.
Try asking: What was the purpose of this story? and list options that are clearly stated and similar but not detailed.
This is also a way to cut down on the use of irrelevant information and streamline the time used taking the test as well as taking it. Adding overly detailed answers can confuse students, which can cause incorrectly answered questions even among students who know the correct answer. Confusion can cause many problems outside of a single occurrence. It can cause nervous students to second guess themselves and skew test results even more as they make mistakes because of their anxieties.
This is method allows you to prevent these negative impacts while also challenging students to learn the information well enough to find the correct answer.
To make full use of this method of creating answers you should also provide answer choices that are correct answers to questions about information taught at the same time. This is a great way to make sure your students are taking exams seriously and learning instead of memorizing material that a subject will later build on.
When a student memorizes information instead of learning it they often lose the ability to use the information to solve other problems as well as simply forgetting it once they will not be tested on it again. For many subjects, this can lead to students lagging after they find they cannot build on the information they have forgotten. To prevent problems with future subjects it is better to teach students to learn even the most basic concepts and apply them instead of simply forgetting them.
This is especially true for STEM classes because of how reliant each formula is on your ability to use other formulas.
When creating questions for your exam another aspect that must be considered is the overall clarity of each question and its answer. You do not want students to be confused about what they are being asked. Confusion is a common cause of mistakes on the students’ part.
Multiple-choice exams offer a great benefit in that they provide easily calculated statistics about the difficulty of students to grasp certain concepts and possibly indicate that trying a different teaching method for certain topics might be best.
However, this can be ruined by questions that are not easily understood by students. A simple way to fix this problem is to make problems obvious and easy to recognize within each question.
Instead of asking: Which of the following is true of the Second Amendment?
Ask: What rights are granted by the Second Amendment?
By asking a question with a definite answer you are allowing students to focus on what you trying to teach them instead of confusing them with long and detailed answers that lead to mistakes when students are attempting to answer questions promptly.
This provides an extra benefit in that it allows students to spend less time on each question, which is beneficial when giving exams with a time limit. This is a very simple way to help prepare students for standardized testing as well so that they manage their time well and give each question the attention it deserves.
When faced with long and complicated questions on more difficult exams after being allowed to test with questions that are much more definitive it has been found that students will often recognize the problem faster as they process the information given. For example, if you spent several months answering a question that was asked in simple terms over and over and are then asked the question with several unnecessary details added your brain would automatically recognize it as the same question and disregard details that do not change the problem.
This is an ability that is developed when questions are posed deliberately and continuously with this method. Each student must know what they are being asked so that statistics based on answers can be as accurate as possible and used for the benefit of the teacher and student.
Keeping all previous methods in mind, the most important strategy in preventing students from memorizing answers is to create situations in which the student is required to use the information they were given instead of simply stating it.
This can be done by giving students a cause-and-effect scenario such as Jessica began an hour-long task at 5:30 but took a ten-minute break at 6:00, when will Jessica complete the task?
This forces the student to use the information they were taught to process and answer the question instead of repeating a memorized fact.
Another option to complete this goal is to create higher-level questions using scenarios that have not before been mentioned in class so that the students must apply a concept, they have been taught instead of simply memorizing situations given and answers while not understanding the steps that must be taken to reach each answer.
If you have been using the same scenario to show different ways of coming to each answer and proceed to use that exact scenario on the test, it is more likely that a student simply remembers the answer you gave in class and chooses it or whatever is closest instead of remembering how to solve the problem itself and coming up with the answering themselves. These types of questions are best used for subjects such as science and math where scenarios provide key information as to how to solve the problem.
It is also important to change variables, such as numbers, when creating each scenario. For example, if you taught a formula using an example given in the textbook and then change the situation slightly but not the numbers involved in the question then you have failed at changing the scenario for the test.
Another negative aspect that occurs when repeating scenarios while teaching is that students may feel like certain topics have less real-life applications and are, therefore, less important to learn. This can quickly lead to students writing off a topic as useless and unrealistic. If a student does this it will be hard to change their minds about the subject as a whole and can lead to a downward spiral caused by a lack of interest in the material.
It is much easier to prove that a subject is important and has uses outside of the classroom before a student has decided not to learn it than after they have decided to focus more on what they deem useful.
In Summary
Multiple-choice exams are great for many reasons. They are easier to process and take less time than a written exam and allow teachers clear statistics they can use to improve teaching methods.
However, they also have several negative outcomes. They can encourage students to memorize material instead of learning it and give teachers incorrect data to track their students’ progression as a result.
The only way to prevent this is to create a well-written exam that eliminates confusion and makes testing processes simpler for both students and teachers. By asking direct questions you can prevent any irrelevant information from clouding a student’s judgment and make them apply knowledge of a subject to answer the question instead of memorizing facts.
Providing answers that are similar with as little detail as possible also provides difficulty for students who are memorizing basic concepts instead of learning processes. Creating an easily determined problem within each question also allows teachers to cut back on confusion while giving students enough information that they can apply knowledge learned the way they are taught while cutting back on any details that might confuse them and lead them to apply incorrect information or processes to the problem.
The most important part of creating the questions is how you use the information you are given to make a student respond in a way that shows they know the material well enough to apply it to an everyday scenario. This is another way that you can prevent students from memorizing instead of learning and practicing skills they will need in not only your subject but others as well.
While creating multiple-choice exams may seem easy, it can be a time-consuming and arduous task for those who have never created one before. However, a well-composed multiple-choice exam is worth the effort in that it can be used repeatedly among its other benefits.
