33 Lab 14: Designing Multiple Choice Practice Questions – Part II
Erin Mazerolle and Sherry Neville-MacLean
Learning Objectives
With your group
- Consider feedback to improve your work
- Consider level of difficulty of content and/or questions
- Create some plausible but false response options
- Create some non-plausible and/or humorous response options (appropriate for the audience)
Assignment: Your team will submit one multiple choice practice question per team member (i.e., 3-4 questions per team).
Previously, you developed the question and answer. This week, the focus is on creating the “distractors”. Distractors are answer options that are plausible, but inaccurate. Keep notes throughout the process below, as you will have to submit a log of your team’s work. Note: the question is also called the “stem“.
Step 1. Begin by reviewing the feedback you received for the Multiple Choice: Part I homework submission. Is there anything you might change based on that feedback? If so, do make the change(s).
Step 2. Remember that we would like a mix of question difficulties among each group. Write down the intended difficulty of your question, and keep it in mind when selecting distractor items.
Step 3. Identify some plausible distractors. These might be related concepts from your OER section or another section or chapter, terms with similar words, etc. We do want a few questions, but not all, to include distractors that are meant to be light-hearted or funny.
Step 4. Draft a “quiz” with your team’s questions and answer options. (Check in with your instructors.)
Step 5. Give your quiz to another team.
Step 6. As a team, complete the other team’s quiz. Rate the difficulty of each question and provide feedback. Were the questions clearly written? Did you notice any errors? etc. Return the completed quiz and feedback to the other team.
Step 7. Read the other team’s feedback on your quiz. Do you need to make any changes? Did their difficulty ratings agree with your own?
Step 8. Submit your log of work and final questions and answer options here on Moodle. The manager should submit your group’s work in a single Word document and organize the document by question (i.e., Question 1, Steps 1-7; Question 2, Steps 1-7, etc.). Be sure to indicate the intended “best” answer for each question.
Summary and Modification of Some Helpful Tips from University of Waterloo:
- Rather than repeating information in each response option / alterative, place common information in the stem.
- Limit the response options to 4-5 choices.
- Make sure there is only one best answer.
- Avoid “none of the above” and “all of the above” for these practice questions.
University of Waterloo. Designing Multiple-Choice Questions. Retrieved January 12, 2024, from University’s website: https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/catalogs/tip-sheets/designing-multiple-choice-questions. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
