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Rationale
Critics declare that Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs, for brevity) assess only the lowest levels of student learning and offer students greater opportunities to guess at answers. They reward memorization while failing to stimulate communication, critical thinking, and analysis skills.
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But with careful question-writing and assessment design, MCQs can still be useful tools online. Quick quizzes, or sets of MCQs, can be useful formative assessments, serving as auto-graded, low-stakes homework that lets students know how they are doing. Employing features included in many learning management systems, even exams can have multiple choice questions that challenge students to demonstrate what they have learned.
Traditional Guidelines for Good Multiple Choice Questions
Treat exam writing as a process, with drafting and revising stages. Don’t try to write more than a few MCQs in a single day. One tactic is drafting one or two questions after you craft a lesson or teach a class, when your sense of what you are teaching is strongest. Later on, revise these questions together. Check to make sure that each has a clear correct answer and that other options are clearly wrong. Decide whether any question yields the answer to another too easily.
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