Writing assessment questions for online delivery: Principles and guidelines

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Section 1: Overall issues in computer assessment delivery
3. Section 2: Choosing an appropriate question style
   1. Multiple choice and variants
   2. Anatomy of a Multiple Choice Question
   3. True or False
   4. Multiple response
   5. True False Don't Know (TFD)
   6. Extended MCQ
   7. Matching and variants
   8. Extended matching
   9. Matching: Ranking/Ordering
   10. Matching: Drag and drop
   11. Free response questions and variants
   12. Cloze tests
4. Section 3: Questions at different learning levels
5. Section 4: Writing effective objective questions
6. Section 5: Developing online assessments and converting from traditional formats
7. Summary

Multiple choice and variants

Multiple choice questions require the participant to select one or more options from a list of possible answers. They are believed to offer a reliable way of testing student knowledge. The example below shows a fairly common type of MCQ, with an image and six options.

A standard MCQ with image

What does this question test?

We may observe that in this example what is being tested is whether the student can recognise the name of the instrument from a list, rather than whether s/he can recall it unprompted. Arguably it is the latter that the student will need to be able to do as a practitioner, so the value or appropriateness of the presentation of this question can perhaps be called into question. Can you think of another way of presenting this question?