Creating Effective Multiple Choice Exams

By Meg Gorzycki, Ed.D.

Instructors at all levels use multiple choice exams to test students’ knowledge. Multiple choice is the format universally used in standardized testing that often determines whether an applicant will be admitted into the college of one’s choice, and whether an elementary or secondary school merits state interventions. As such, multiple choice tests have generated considerable attention. They’ve also encouraged an industry of education-related entrepreneurs to claim they can teach students how to “beat the test,” rather than concentrate on how to encourage student learning and make the exams reflect an accurate assessment of what the student has learned.

Multiple choice exams are frequently administered to save time. Other forms of assessment—short answer, essay, etc.—usually take the instructor a longer period of time to grade. Machines can scan a multiple choice answer sheet in seconds while it take hours to read and provide commentary on an exam comprised of several pages of student writing. While multiple choice tests may expedite grading, they also tend to target recall of information: facts, a particular interpretation or perspective, an established insight about cause-effect or significance, or a rehearsed understanding of processes or relationships between items or ideas.

The purpose of this module is to raise instructors’ awareness of the strengths and limitations of multiple choice exams, help instructors distinguish between high and low quality multiple tests, and to improve the way instructors assess student learning.

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