Construction of Multiple-choice Questions

Question Types

Questions or task types are generally categorized into three types:

• Closed Tasks
• Semi-Open Tasks
• Open Tasks

In closed tasks, the answer choices are known to both the instructors and the students. This includes, for example, multiple-choice questions, as well as matching question types where answers need to be assigned to a category. A special form of closed tasks is hot-spot questions, where the task is to identify the correct area on an image.

Semi-open tasks are a mix of closed and open tasks. The most well-known type of question here is the short answer question. In this case, students independently provide a response with a few characters, which is predetermined by the instructor but not known to the students beforehand.

Open tasks are question types that usually require students to meet higher learning objectives by asking for an analysis or a transfer of knowledge. The most well-known type of task here is the essay, which has proven effective in written tests. Besides text, creating an illustration, a mind map, or a flowchart can also be requested.

Types of Selection Questions

Why Selection Questions?

The major advantage of selection questions is that they can be evaluated automatically. This is especially time-saving with a question pool consisting of many selection questions and a large cohort of students to be assessed. You can draw on a considerable variety of question types like cloze tests or hotspot questions and thus set different focal points. Particularly with selection questions (but not exclusively with these types), you can incorporate various media in an e-assessment, thereby adding value by, for example, embedding images in the questions or answer choices. Dynamic media such as video clips and audio recordings can also be used. Another advantage is that they offer a largely objectively comparable assessment.

At the end of this page, we will show you examples of selection questions and tasks that can be automatically evaluated.

Structure of a Single or Multiple Choice Question

Example of an MC Item:
The capital city of Rhineland-Palatinate is … (question stem)

Koblenz (distractor)
Kaiserslautern (distractor)
Mainz (correct answer)
Trier (distractor)

The question stem contains the main content of the item. It should have the following characteristics:

• Simple, clearly understandable, and more detailed than the answer options to facilitate access to the material.
• Avoid artificially complicated tasks and trick questions.
• The question should always be answerable without knowing the answer.
• Try to phrase the question positively; if you use negations, highlight them with emphasis such as bold text.

For the answers:

• Use short and clear answers, each containing only one statement.
• The answer options should be clearly distinguishable but belong to the same category.
• It is helpful to derive the incorrect answer options (distractors) from reasons such as common misconceptions. This can also help to include all potentially relevant answer options in the choices, though it's crucial to balance between too many and too few options.
• The answers should also match the formulation of the question.
• When asking for the most appropriate answer options, they do not need to be entirely wrong; however, the correct answer should still be unmistakable.