Anatomy of a good MCQ: The Question and Answer

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Foundations of Teaching for Learning: Introduction to Student Assessment

81 оценки

Commonwealth Education Trust

Foundations of Teaching for Learning: Introduction to Student Assessment

81 оценки

The Foundations of Teaching for Learning programme is for anyone who is teaching, or who would like to teach, in any subject and any context - be it at school, at home or in the workplace. With dynamic lessons taught by established and respected professionals from across the Commonwealth, this eight course programme will see you develop and strengthen your skills in teaching, professionalism, assessment, and more. As you carry on through the programme, you will find yourself strengthening not only your skills, but your connection with colleagues across the globe. A professional development opportunity not to be missed. There are various techniques which help to assess student learning. This course helps teacher to acquire the skills to develop and use appropriate assessment procedures. Enhance your course by joining the Commonwealth teaching community on our website, Facebook and Twitter.

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Guidelines for developing and using objectively answered question procedures

This week we describe specific techniques for designing assessment tools. The assessment tool that we will focus on is multiple-choice questions (MCQs), however we will present a number of different formats. You will be given practical advice and tools for creating a variety of good test questions. The key point to note is that unless such objectively-scored questions are written well, getting them right will not be an indicator of knowledge or skill in the domain being assessed. Test-wiseness (i.e., knowing how to answer such questions) increases test scores but this is no guarantee students actually understand more. Hence, care and attention needs to be paid to how test questions are written. Stay active – and enjoy the learning this week.

Anatomy of a good MCQ: The Question and Answer11:19

Anatomy of a good MCQ: The Wrong Answers11:01

Valid alternatives to bad MCQ: Binary choice; Matching9:59

Valid alternatives to bad MCQ: Sequencing; Sorting11:26

Interview two18:01

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Dr Peter Keegan
Senior Lecturer, Te Puna Wānanga, Faculty of Education
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Associate Professor Gavin Brown
Director, Faculty of Education Quantitative Data Analysis and Research Unit
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Professor John MacBeath
Professor Emeritus
University of Cambridge, UK

[MUSIC]

Welcome to week four.

In this week, we're going to look at a variety

of testing techniques that you can use in your classroom assessments.

The first technique that we want to look at is the multiple choice question.

Since it's actually much more complicated than it

sounds, we're going to break this into a couple of parts

and teach you the skills needed to do each part.

And in looking at our curriculum map for assessment, our focus here now is in terms

of the formal teacher driven test-like mechanisms.

And this is to do with the format, and we're trying to make sure the format of

this is both reliable and accurate so that the interpretations we make are valid.

It's important to remember that there is no perfect assessment method.

There is no one way that's the

best way to collect information about student learning.

And it's important to keep in mind that no

matter what way you use, there's work involved in assessment.

It's one of the reasons a lot of teachers are grumpy that assessment

responsibilities have been taken from

qualifications authorities and passed back to schools.

But there's work in designing

and creating assessments or there's work in marking

and scoring them or sometimes unfortunately work in both.

It really matters to teachers given how much we have to

do that the assessment component is manageable and not overwhelm us.

It's also important that the assessments tell us things that we

need to know like who needs to be taught what next.

And clearly, well-planned assessments have more

potential value to our teaching and our curriculum

and student learning than impromptu, last-minute

quizzes written on the back of an envelope.

We may have all done it, but this is not good practice.

When should you use a multiple choice question?

When the question or task has a single, clear, agreed correct answer.

If the question could be answered in one way and everybody agrees that

that one way is the right answer, then a multiple-choice question is suitable.

When we want to focus on thinking, not just on remembering,

it's possible to write multiple choice questions

that are challenging intellectually, that require thinking.

Multiple choice questions have the reputation of being

recall questions, but they don't have to be.

When we want to remove the workload of the student away from writing,

but we don't want to remove it from thinking,

we want students to think and choose rather than think and write.

And this gives us some efficiency.

The general advantage of multiple choice questions are fairly obvious.

It's easy with lots of questions where students only have to choose an answer,

to collect data about a domain in a broad way.

To collect many pieces of information about students' knowledge in a domain.

Which means that in a relatively short period, we get a sense of who

really does know lots about it, a little about it, or a medium amount.

The other thing that we know about multiple

choice questions is that students like them because when

they see three wrong answers and a right answer,

it actually helps them remember what they've learned better.

And on the whole, multiple choice questions give students higher scores.

The disadvantages, of course,

are no surprise.

It's hard to write good quality questions.

And, it's too easy to write questions that just test surface remembering.

There is a guessing factor,

so sometimes students get things right just by chance.

Obviously multiple choice questions as opposed to oral

questions, require students to be able to read.

And of course, they're subject to what we call test wiseness.

"Oh, look C is the right answer again.

When in doubt, choose C" - these kinds of little rules

are effective, because often we're careless

in when we're designing multiple choice questions.

But the important goal to remember here is that, students who do well,

who get many questions right, do so because they actually know

more or understand more or have greater skill in the domain being assessed.

It shouldn't be because we wrote the questions badly, and

so it's up to us to have a reference and this

set of notes, and these activities for this lecture will help

guide you into making sure you write the questions well.

A little anatomy.

We call the question that starts a multiple choice question the "stem".

We call the right answer the "key".

And we call the wrong answers the "distractors".

When we're writing the question, let's focus on some do's and dont's.

Do keep it clear, specific and short.

Frankly ask a question, don't make a run on sentence.

For example, "What is the name of this book?" instead of "The name of this book is..."

For one thing, I could have finished this sentence

"The name of this book is hard to remember."

And it's a correct English sentence and it completes the sentence -

it's not the question you asked, but it's

a legitimate answer.

Or, you tell people what you want them to do.

"State the advantages of..."

"State two advantages of..." and be explicit.

Try to avoid those not-worded questions, and I'll explain more.

And if you have to ask a not, make sure

it's really clear that there's a not in the question.

And make sure the answer for each question is

not hidden in a question elsewhere in the test.

Please, don't make the questions too long to read.

Avoid sentence completion starters.

Avoid negatively worded questions.

And make sure you've checked the grammar so you haven't left any clues.

Certainly in English, if I

have a sentence, a question that starts with "An...", then

I know I need a word with a vowel starter.

So, there are certain rules in every language that

might give clues to what the correct answer is.

Why shouldn't you use a negatively worded sentence, starter?

Well first of all, asking which of these is not true is

getting students to focus on the thing you don't want them to learn.

So, why are we asking them to pay attention

to the thing that we don't want them to know?

One of these things is not true in this question on the screen.

So, it focuses on the wrong knowledge.

It's sometimes confusing.

And frankly, even I, after many years of reading

English, still look at questions and go, "Not true?"

and I have to puzzle out

what is the answer.

And for students who don't have English as

their first language, or English as their first

culture, answering negatively worded questions, "Should I answer

with no or yes?" - these are very confusing.

So, please avoid the not question.

When it comes to writing the correct answer, the best thing to do

when I write the multiple choice questions,

is I write the right answer first.

And it doesn't go in A or C,

I jumble them up,

but I make sure that the right answer is

the right answer and that there's only one right answer.

Have someone else read your questions before you use them and if they think that

B is the right answer when you wanted

C, then you know there is something confusing.

You have to check that the correct answer that

you chose is actually correct and it's sufficient. But please,

don't just let it be the one the repeats key words from the stem.

Repeating the key word is a real clue for

a test wise student, "This must be the right answer".

Don't copy directly from the textbook.

Paraphrase, work it around so it's not the same wording that they've read before.

And make sure that the answer, and

the question are written in good quality language.

Whatever language you're testing in, make sure they're good quality language.

Remember, the goal here is to ensure that the student who

chooses the right answer actually knows the material that you're asking.

That they didn't get it right, because you wrote the question wrong.

Here's an example, I want you to write the answer after we finish this video.

Look at this slide, this final slide, write the answer.

Is there only one answer for each question?

Why should teachers use multiple choice questions?

What part of the multiple choice question is the stem?

What is the major disadvantage?

When can you use the word "not" in a multiple choice question?

What is the main reason for checking that the answer is correct?

Some of these have one answer.

Some of them have multiple answers.

And some of them will be of varying plausibility.

And that gives us the clue for how we can turn

these kinds of yes/no questions or opinion questions into multiple choice questions.

And we'll look more at that in the

next session.

[MUSIC]

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