When seeking efficient and reliable measures of student learning, instructors often turn to multiple-choice assessments. After all, multiple-choice questions tend to be easier to grade and more objective than their open-ended counterparts. However, multiple-choice assessments are more than just convenient.
Despite the belief that multiple-choice tests emphasize lower-level skills such as recall and comprehension, the multiple-choice format, by its very nature, requires students to engage in one of the highest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, evaluation. As students weigh one option against another to determine the “best” response, they practice skills such as comparing, judging, and evaluating. Even if the student is not sure of the correct answer, the process of eliminating incorrect answers requires these same higher-level skills. Here are a few strategies to use multiple-choice questions to engage students in critical thinking:
Integrate Verbs from Higher Levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy
One way to promote critical thinking is to incorporate higher-level verbs into multiple-choice question stems, as shown in the samples below.
- Evaluate the following options and then select the one that is the x for y.
- Which of the following best distinguishes x from y?
- If applying x to y, which of the following is a possible outcome?
- Which of the following judgments could you make about x based on y?
- Which of the following pieces of evidence justifies x?
- Which of the following would disprove x?
Reword Existing Open-ended Questions
You can transform some of your open-ended questions into multiple-choice questions that invite critical thinking.
- Reword open-ended questions by changing the verb to a noun (ex. change Describe x to Which is the best description of x? (Dickinson, 2011)
- Change simple questions into multi-logic questions that require students to combine knowledge from more than one area to solve a problem, draw a conclusion, and so on. (ex. interpret results from a graph and select the principle that best explains the result.) (Brame, 2015)
Mix Multiple-Choice and Constructed Response
If you want to use your existing questions, add an open-ended question that invites students to explain their selection; this helps you to “see” your students’ thinking.
- Have students elaborate on their final answer choice or explain why the remaining options are not the best.
- Offer more than one possible correct answer and ask students to choose one (or more) and justify their choice(s)
- Give students the chance to challenge a test question in writing, explaining why the question (or answer choices) might not be valid (Kerkman & Johnson, 2014)
Choose Questions with More Than One Answer
In Teaching Naked, 2012, Jose Antonio Bowen recommends the following types of questions to provide practice for critical thinking:
- Questions with no single answer
- Questions that direct students to select from a series of true statements
- Questions that instruct students to choose more than one answer
- Ambiguous questions
- Questions with debatable answers.
Use Micro Questioning
Micro questioning involves creating a series of multiple-choice items for each learning objective that helps students “hit the target” from multiple angles (Kuddus, 2016). The questions for each objective range from the lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy to those that involve the practical application of the objective. Questions can be recycled and used for quizzes, online practice, in-class group activities, and exam reviews.
References
Bowen, J. A. (2012). Teaching naked: How moving technology out of your classroom will improve student learning.
Jossey-Bass.
Brame, J.C. (2013). Writing good multiple-choice test questions. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching.
http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/writing-good-multiple-choice-test-questions/
Brigham Young University Faculty Center. (2001). 14 rules for writing multiple choice questions.
https://testing.byu.edu/handbooks/14%20Rules%20for%20Writing%20Multiple-Choice%20Questions.pdf
Dickinson, M. (2011, December 5). Writing multiple-choice questions for higher level-thinking. Learning Solutions.
http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/804/writing-multiple-choice-questions-for-higher-level-thinking
Kerkman, D.D. & Johnson, A.T. (2014). Challenging multiple-choice questions to engage critical thinking. Insight:
A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, 9, 92-97. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/afef/5af5d6d38b19e10157cfbf0822eb8f10d877.pdf.
Kuddus, Ruhul. (2016). The micro-questioning approach for content transmission. [Conference session].
Lilly International Conference, Bethesda, MD.