Intriguing Strategy In Assessing Multiple Choice Tests – Giving Credit For Explaining Which Options Are Wrong

The Best Ways To Use Multiple Choice Exercises contains a number of intriguing ideas on how to use multiple-choice assessments.

Here’s a Twitter thread from this morning that contains a new one (new, at least, to me). I think it could be easily adapted to non-math assessments by having students explain in sentences, as well:

This is an interesting idea! It would cut down in cheating, although it would take quite a bit of work to unpack the distractors to determine the mistakes. And of course, multiple-choice questions would take longer to grade. #mtbos #iteachmath https://t.co/Gy6QDZnzCY

— Bobson Wong (@bobsonwong) November 17, 2018

My seniors told me their other math teacher gives them partial credit on multiple choice questions if they visibly eliminate wrong choices. I've never thought of that, but I like it. #MTBoS

— James Cleveland (@jacehan) November 16, 2018

@teacher2teacher She said that if a question has, say, 5 choices, they need to cross off three of them, leaving them with a 50/50 shot of getting it right. Then they'll get half credit if they chose the wrong one. Nothing if they cross off too few or cross off the correct answer.

— James Cleveland (@jacehan) November 16, 2018

i had a college prof on 4 choice MC Qs broke down like: 1 pt if left blank. 2 pt if cross out one wrong answer. 3 pt if cross out two wrong answer. 4 pt for correct answer. 0 pt if choose a wrong answer. he said there is value in knowing what you didn’t know/using logic to narrow

— Mike Fouchet (@mikefouchet) November 17, 2018

I did something similar in my chemistry class. The multiple-choice question was followed by a brief short answer asking them to explain their thinking. If they couldn’t, or if they’re thinking was erroneous, it changed with they were given for their correct mult-choice answer.

— Dawn Johnson 🇳🇴🇺🇸🇬🇧🇩🇰 (@sundene) November 17, 2018

If they left the short answer blank, they were given no credit on the multiple-choice answer above it. If you can’t tell me why you chose something, then you are guessing. Even a wrong explanation tells me something, and that’s important.

— Dawn Johnson 🇳🇴🇺🇸🇬🇧🇩🇰 (@sundene) November 17, 2018

“Certainty Based Marking (CBM) involves asking students… the answer [and] how certain they are that their answer is correct. [CBM] rewards accurate reporting of certainty & good discrimination between more & less reliable answers.” https://t.co/AzsT6ek6mx https://t.co/gG5pJDCFzl

— Sendhil Revuluri (@revuluri) November 17, 2018