Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:4422] RE: Can multiple choice questions promote higher order thinking in e-learning?
From: Gayle Calverley (Gayle.J.Calverley@man.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 26 Feb 2003 - 18:25:25 MET
From: "Gayle Calverley" <Gayle.J.Calverley@man.ac.uk> Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 18:25:25 +0100 Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:4422] RE: Can multiple choice questions promote higher order thinking in e-learning?
Some time ago I did some work, as part of a larger project, on how
students tackled different types of problem and how these might be
represented in an MCQ environment.
A series of scientific problems requiring deduction and calculation
to solve were posed to students, who were asked to show all their
working alongside their selected MC answer. Each problem was
accompanied by five statements about the problem which may or
may not be true or correct. The correct MCQ answer would be the
one that contained the correct analysis regarding the five
statements,
e.g. statement A is correct, and statement D is wrong.
Only statements B, D, E are correct.
Statement D is incorrect.
etc.
The student's working clearly revealed that for each problem there
were students who could:
a. correctly calculate to the end
b. couldn't even approach the problem
c. could work part way through the problem, but would make a
conceptual error at a specific working stage. This may involve a
single concept or a common error or a combination of the two in
the same stage.
Formulation of the statements to reflect each conceptual point in
the problem, and careful combination of these in the MCQ
responses, provided an MCQ option for each case at which a
student went wrong within calculating the answer.
As the problems were designed to test higher order skills, this
questioning technique provided a mechanism for using MCQs to
achieve this type of testing. However, as you can see, it required a
clear understanding of conceptual issues within each topic and
strong skills in question design within a given subject area to
achieve this.
All the best
Gayle
________________________________________________________________
Dr Gayle J Calverley,
Distributed Learning, 186 Waterloo Place,
University of Manchester, Oxford Road, M13 9GP
Email: gayle.j.calverley@man.ac.uk
Telephone: 0161 275 8106 Internal: 58106
Fax: 0161 275 2221 Internal: 52221
Resources and Technology Advisor, Distributed Learning
LifeSign JISC DNER Project http://www.lifesign.ac.uk/
ALT Occasional Publications Editor http://www.alt.ac.uk/
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