Planning Ahead

Assessment Planning

This training module is about writing more effective multiple choice assessments. Multiple choice question assessments can be a very effective way to assess students' knowledge on a wide range of topics in a relatively short amount of time. They're also great for reducing the amount of time it takes to score and give students feedback in large classes and are perfect for quick formative assessments to check for basic understanding as well. But the first thing we need to determine before we start writing questions are some big-picture questions about the assessment:

1. What is the purpose of this assessment?
2. What course or module level objectives am I assessing?
3. What specific knowledge or skills am I looking for the students to have?

An assessment is a tool for collecting this information, kind of like a survey, so in order to write an effective assessment we need to first know what information it is we need from the student. One is unlikely to hit a target they haven't first identified.