One bane of higher education and professionals is the ubiquity of multiple choice questions and tests acting as gatekeepers for higher levels of credentialing, program admission, or pay. This problem affects individuals seeking their GED, drivers licenses,...
[PREMIUM] TEST-TAKING: DYSLEXIA and MULTIPLE CHOICE
At the secondary and university level, many students with dyslexia may prefer short answer questions to multiple choice. There are many reasons why the multiple choice question format may not be a good estimator of a student’s knowledge. It is very common for the questions and choice answers to be ambiguous. From Biochemical Education: “Writing good multiple choice questions is hard, a fact not appreciated by all teachers and examiners. There is a tendency to use imprecise terms, and even when apparently precise terms such as always and never are used (for example in true/false type tests), it seems that not everyone agrees these are indeed absolutes….In a survey of medical examiners, Holsgrove and Elzubeir found that of 63 respondents, 51 considered that always means […]