21. Making the Most of Multiple-Choice Questions: Getting Beyond Remembering

Abstract

Multiple-choice questions are widely used in higher education and have some important advantages over constructed-response test questions. It seems, however, that many teachers underestimate the value of multiple-choice questions, believing them to be useful only for assessing how well students can memorize information, but not for assessing higher-order cognitive skills. Several strategies are presented for generating multiple-choice questions that can effectively assess students’ ability to understand, apply, analyze, and evaluate information.