Tips on How to Write Good Multiple Choice Exams

If you teach an introductory class in a major university, especially in the sciences, you likely have over 100 students in the class. With such a large class, having open questions on exams with students writing answers in free format will use up a great deal of time grading the exams. This leaves several options for efficient grading, but the simplest is using multiple choice exams. One caveat though - for this type of exam to correctly assess the students' abilities requires careful crafting.

Top 10 tips on how to write good multiple choice exams #10: Most details belong in the question, not the answers.

One simple way to provide clues to the clueless student is to have a great many details in the answers. If only the correct answer is detailed, the student can easily guess that the short answers are the wrong ones, also known as distracters. If you put in the time to make the distracters similarly detailed, there is a greater chance that a student will see a hint of inaccuracy in the distracters.

One way to avoid giving too many hints is to make the distracters identical to the correct answer, except in one or two crucial details. However, it would save you effort, and the students time if you would include all the identical details in the question, and make the answers as short and clear as possible.

Top 10 tips on how to write good multiple choice exams #9: Penalize wrong answers to reduce the incentive to guess.

If you provide five answers for each question, take away 1/4 the point value of a question for each wrong answer. That way if a student is guessing at random he or she is likely to get one out of each five questions right, but the other four wrong, ending up with the same score of zero on average. Students who know enough to recognize that one or more of the distracters are wrong will increase the fraction of correct guesses, and have a higher score on average.

Top 10 tips on how to write good multiple choice exams #8: If you pair up a distracter with the right answer, make the remaining distracters a matched set.