Week 4: Rules for Multiple-Choice Tests

Hi all! Back again so soon! This week we had so much to discuss, it had to be broken down in to two different blog posts! All of our resources this week were incredibly interesting, however, the ones that really stuck out to me were the articles discussing multiple-choice tests. I had never really considered how much work must go in to how precise the wording in multiple-choice tests should be. Usually, when you hear the phrase “multiple-choice” you would usually think that would make things easier, but that is not always the case. Sometimes, the phrasing in these questions actually makes it much harder to choose the correct answer.

I found the list of “rules” for writing multiple-choice questions to be extremely helpful! I especially liked the rule that stated to “make all distractors plausible”. When I was in high school, I never quite understood why on a multiple-choice test, one of the options for an answer would be something like “Bart Simpson”. I get that this was the teacher’s attempt at trying to throw us a bone, but they could have easily just left that option out and it would have had the exact same effect.

Another rule that I really appreciated was one that stated to “avoid double negatives”. Personally, these were always, by far, my least favorite questions. The wording was always so confusing to me. Those questions that were worded “Which one of these is NOT correct?” and then several options would also include words like “no” or “not” caused so much confusion. The wording in multiple-choice tests has a huge impact on the performance of students. The goal of teachers should not be to “trick” their students while they are taking a test. The goal should be that the students do their absolute best and that they strive for greatness.

Have a great week!