Writing Good Exam Questions

Writing Good Exam Questions
- Question formatting
- Example Question
Grading

hat tip to Professor Jonathan Sterne

You will produce a multiple choice questions based on a concept from the lecture or book. The purpose of creating questions is to (a) demonstrate understanding of the each concepts and, (b) generate part of the full exam based on student feedback. Further, reviewing the questions allows students to review concepts discussed.

Your task is to write an original multiple-choice question consisting of a question stem and 5 possible answers – only one of which is correct, with an accompanying explnation.

The questions should address an important concept, fact, or example covered in the lecture or in the readings. The question should not be trivial and the answer should have a single, clear, and correct answer.

Most of the ideas in the question should be contained in the stem, so that students can easily compare the different answers and judge for themselves. A good question stem always explicitly attributed ideas to a source, either an author (“According to Han et al., page 33”) or the lecture (“According to lecture, day 5”). It is fine to add images or equations as long as they are completely between the answer’s brackets.

Each answer should be roughly the same length. The correct answer should be clearly correct. Using the terminology from the source helps avoid confusion. For this assignment, always make the correct anwser, option a.

A good question tests for comprehension, not recognition. A bad exam question can be answered simply by recognition. The right answer is something you’ve seen or heard before and the wrong answers are clearly wrong. You may add a hilariously wrong answer only as an extra 5th answer choice.

After writing the question stem and listing correct and incorrect answer choices. Explain why the correct answer is correct and the incorrect answers are wrong. Some exampleis of wrong answers include:

an argument the author rehearses and then dismisses
a claim that is the opposite of what the author argues
a claim made by a different author on a related topic
a true statement from the reading, but one irrelevant to the question
an example from lecture that was describing a different item

Each answer choice must be unique and there can only be one right answer. You are not allowed to use all of the above, none of the above, or similar constructs as your answer choices.

You will submit an electronic versions of the question on the class discussion board. Students who post first will be credited with the submitted assignment.

This activity will help you to review the important concepts and consider why each concept is so.

Question formatting

Your question must have these stuctural components:

Angle brackets separating the letters for each answer choice.
At the end of the answer choice text, include a closing angle bracket. The full question answer should be contained within the open and close brackets.
Include three dashes (---) in between the question and answers with a new line space above and below the dashes.
Explainations must be separated from the answer choices.
Include three dashes (---) in between the answers and explainations with a new line space above and below the dashes.

Example Question

According to lecture (and Peters), what motivates the drive toward communication?

---

<A> Miscommunication. </A> 
<B> The drive for profit. </B> 
<C> Encoding and decoding. </C> 
<D> The particulars of languages. </D> 
<E> Cute puppies. </E>

---


"A" is correct.  "Miscommunication is the scandal that motivates the very concept communication in the first place." (Peters, p. 6).  Also the lecture refers to the technical and therapeutic discourses of communication, where communication is both the problem and the solution. The prof’s Jean Charest and Twitter example illustrated this point.

B is wrong because Peters doesn't really talk about the profit motive (though it's a great wrong answer because later in the term, several other authors will discuss it).

C refers to concepts in the Hall reading.

D refers to a concept form the lecture about a different algorithm.

E is hilarious, but an example of a bad wrong answer, because it is too obviously wrong.  It comes as a non sequitur.  But it also illustrates why multiple-choice exams can’t be tests of opinion. In your life, puppies may drive you to communicate (and therefore the example may be experientially true), they weren’t mentioned in lecture or in the Peters reading as a reason for communication.

The question stem begins with “according to” and clearly attributes the idea. Each of the answer choices are properly wrapped in capital angle bracketed letters. The question part is delineated with three lines. An explaination is included for each answer choice. We assume no other question was previously included.

Grading

Read the instructions carefully.

Full-credit: Question and answers are correct, well-phrased, corrected and incorrect options explained, follows the assignment directions, formatting is correct.
Half-credit: Correct answer is in fact wrong or is close to repeating an earlier question but is otherwise correct; other formatting issues exist.
One-tenth credit: An attempt was made.
No-credit: This question was already asked.

Go back to CIS6930