Multiple-choice items often get an unfairly bad rap. When well constructed, they are actually a fantastic item type for assessing a lot of information in a short period of time. They also can be used to assess both lower order and higher order thinking skills (we’ll get to that in another blog entry - stay tuned) so you can stretch their value even more.
Here are a few ideas to amp up your multiple-choice items that will help you better analyze student answers, and get better feedback about how well they learned what you taught.
Tip #1: Make all your distractors (wrong answer choices) plausible, especially for those students who don’t know the content well.
Here are a few ideas to amp up your multiple-choice items that will help you better analyze student answers, and get better feedback about how well they learned what you taught.
Tip #1: Make all your distractors (wrong answer choices) plausible, especially for those students who don’t know the content well.