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Grading and Feedback

30 Tips for Writing Good Multiple-Choice Questions

Multiple-choice tests don’t get much respect. Maybe it’s because they’re associated with memorization, old-fashioned standardized tests, and other situations in which the answer is likely to be “C.”

Yet when properly designed, multiple-choice tests can be a vital addition to your testing tool box. Outlined

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college students in large classroom

Continuous and Rapid Testing (CaRT): A Simple Tool for Assessment and Communication

Most conventional assessment strategies provide limited opportunities for instructors to realign teaching methods and revisit topics that students have not understood well. Teachers can communicate with students individually, but time constraints may prevent multiple individual conversations. Some students in the classroom are reluctant to ask

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Teacher working at desk

Making Feedback Matter

As teachers, we spend countless hours staying up late, reading essays, and making comments to help our students improve. We walk a delicate line, wanting to give students enough support to develop their papers while not overwhelming them with red ink. We carefully foster their

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Writing good multiple-choice questions

Writing Better Multiple-Choice Questions

Eleven years ago, I discovered a life-changing pedagogy called team-based learning. It let me do things in large classrooms that I didn’t think was possible. I found that the key to successful team-based learning was writing really good multiple-choice questions. I would like to look

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Learning about Learning after the Exam

Exam debriefs are typically that: brief. The tests are passed back, score ranges are revealed, and the teacher goes over the most missed questions, identifying and explaining the correct answer. There may be a chance for students to ask questions, but most sit passively. This

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Making Multiple-Choice Exams Better

The relatively new Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology journal has a great feature called a “Teacher-Ready Research Review.” The examples I’ve read so far are well organized, clearly written, full of practical implications, and well referenced. This one on multiple-choice (m/c) tests (mostly

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Interviews to Assess and Mentor Students

Using Interviews to Assess and Mentor Students

Have you considered adding five-minute student interviews to your teaching tool kit? Before you calculate how long it would take to interview all of your students and dismiss this idea out of hand, consider how student interviews provide a unique setting and opportunity for you

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Encouraging Students to Think Beyond the Course Material

Encouraging Students to Think Beyond the Course Material

Research has documented the value of reflective journaling in both face-to-face and online courses. It is especially beneficial for beginning students in first-year seminar courses. But I hear you asking, “What professor has the time read a whole stack of journals?” And I would have

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