The Art of Multiple Choice Quiz Writing: My Five Rules
One quality that separates a great educator from the a group of decent educators, is the desire to see students succeed. Whether in the classroom, outdoors, or through e-learning, great educators want students to do well. How do we know our students are learning and applying our content? One way is to test them. For the EPS411.com online education lessons that are distributed through RapidCE.com we write quizzes to assess knowledge gained.
Whenever I write a multiple choice quiz, I adhere to the following rules.
Rule #1: Do not attempt to trick your learner. Write clear, concise and understandable questions.
Rule #2: Assess for lifelong knowledge not rote memorization. Avoid quizzing on dates or trivial facts.
Rule #3: Start all questions using a question word like: who, when, where, what, why and how.
Rule #4: Questions should be short enough to avoid confusion.
Rule #5: Ensure that all responses are approximately the same length.
Utilizing the five rules, a well written and answerable question may look like this:
What should you avoid when writing quiz questions?
a. Assessing for knowledge
b. Starting with a question word
d. Writing same length answers
The answer is…C.
Remember your goal as an educator is to educate. Assess your students using well written questions. These rules give our quizzes a consistent framework and help ensure accurate student understanding relative to the lesson objectives. What rules do you use when writing quiz questions?
Tags: Evaluation, Question, Quiz, RapidCE, Test