Writing good assessment questions

Assessment at Hastings School

by Leah Smith

Multiple Choice

Which of these are the four pillars of assessment?

• Purpose, validity, reliability & worth

• Reasoning, validity, worth & value

• Purpose, validity, reliability & value

• Purpose, core, reliability & value

Multiple Select

Good assessment should........

• identify gaps in students’ knowledge

• Improves student recall

• Increases understanding of what they know and what they don’t know.

• Encourage students to learn independently

Multiple Choice

Complete the sentence.

Assessments used to generate information upon which decisions are made about student learning - they should provide high-quality information which is fit for the intended _____

• Purpose

• Validity

• Reliability

• Value

​Why use MQCs?

​Retrieval Practice is a tool that enhances learning.

​There are many methods but the main points are:

​

• ​Deliberately recalling information pulls knowledge to the front of your mind.

• ​Asking questions about what has been learned previously supports this knowledge entering our long term memory.

• ​Retrieval practice should not just assess knowledge from the previous lesson but also previous topics and even years.

​Quick feedback

​Frequent low stakes assessments have been shown to improve student learning.

Teachers should use frequent low stakes assessments to gain an accurate picture of student learning and encourage information retrieval.

​How to write good MCQs:

​Dos

• There should be well-defined and clear learning objectives.

• Every question should be associated with the evaluation of a particular learning objective.

• The multiple-choice questions should be meaningful.

• The questions should be kept independent from one another.

• The easy questions should be placed at the beginning of the test and the difficult questions at the end.

 

Don’ts

• The test should not include unnecessarily hard vocabulary.

• The test should not include trick questions or opinion-based questions.

​

Open Ended

What is wrong with this assessment question?

True or False: Tuberculosis is not a non-communicable disease.

Multiple Choice

Which of these are options to avoid in multiple choice questions?

• All of the above

• Short concise options

• Possible / plausible / believable options

• Common misconceptions

Poll

What are the landforms associated with a destructive plate boundary?

• A- Volcanoes

  B- Earthquakes

  C - Elephants

• A- Greek Gods

  B- Earthquakes

  C - Mountain ranges

• A- Trees

  B- Earthquakes

  C - The Empire State building

• A- Volcanoes

  B- Ocean trench

  C -Mountain ranges

​How did you know the answer?

I am sure it wasn't your Geographic knowledge!

​

Potential answers are as important as the questions- ​

​

·       All the options should be phrased in a similar way.

·         Each alternative should be phrased in the shortest possible way.

·         All the alternatives should be presented in a logical order.

·         All the options should be plausible and believable.

·         True statements which do not answer the question can be used.

·         Common misconceptions that do not answer the question can also be used.

​​Why use multiple choice questions?

​

·         Using multiple choice questions can generate valuable information efficiently.

​

·         Well-constructed MCQs can evaluate higher-order thinking skills such as application of knowledge, synthesis, and analysis.

​

·         They can - when used appropriately - promote learning.

​

·         They can be used diagnostically to identify misconceptions in a student’s learning.

 

​

​When not to use multiple choice questions

​·         They can be susceptible to guessing (though unlikely for an entire assessment).

​

·         They cannot measure some skills such as writing ability, creativity or articulation of thought e.g., whether the student could write the answer clearly in an external exam.

·         It can take a long time to construct high quality MQC assessments.

Multiple Choice

When is NOT a good time to use MQCs?

• To generate valuable information efficiently

• To measure still life drawing skills

• When you want to encourage recall from a previous topic

• To identify misconceptions in a students learning

Open Ended

Are you going to use MCQ's more often? Why?