Struggling with Multiple Choice

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Clarissa

November 5, 2014

Remind me again never to do any stupid multiple choice tests. They are supposed to be easy to grade but what I didn’t take into account was that the autistic brain can’t keep track of the meaningless ABCDs. My mind clouds over and I descend into a deep fog when I try to keep track.

I feel like my head is about to explode. Of course, I could have asked the TA but I relied on the accounts of people who kept saying this was easy.

Fuck multiple choice. It was a pain and a half to create the test and grading is even worse.

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11 responses to “Struggling with Multiple Choice”

Thoreau

November 5, 2014

The whole point of multiple choice is to let scantron do it for you.

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 5, 2014
  
  We don’t have a secretary, so I couldn’t do the Scantron sheets.
  
  It’s OK, I’m glad I had this soul-crushing horrifying experience.
  
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  1. Thoreau
    
    November 5, 2014
    
    I’m glad that you came out of this experience with your opposition to multiple-choice reaffirmed.
    
    There’s a certain type of person who gives multiple-choice after going to a consciousness-raising workshop. Those people are a plague.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      November 5, 2014
      
      And what is more important: I have no doubt that these students will not want to have any multiple choice tests again. 🙂
      
      “There’s a certain type of person who gives multiple-choice after going to a consciousness-raising workshop.”
      
      – Do I want to find out what a consciousness-raising workshop is? Or will I be further traumatized by the knowledge?
      
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  2. Thoreau
    
    November 5, 2014
    
    I use that term to refer to workshops on reformed pedagogy methods. At least in STEM, there’s a certain type of presenter who acts like they are trying to get the faculty to stop sinning, and there’s a certain type of attendee who walks out transformed.
    
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David Gendron

November 5, 2014

Multiple choices are useless, except for lazy teachers. I hate to grade those.

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el

November 6, 2014

Couldn’t your husband do the grading for you since it’s multiple choice exam which a machine can check?

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NancyP

November 6, 2014

I too hate writing multiple choice exams, but I am glad to say that I don’t have to write the whole exam (it is a team taught course) and that the grading is done by scanner, with the coursemaster performing and examining statistics to detect dud questions. We are obliged to write multiple choice questions because we are supposed to prepare our students for the board exam format.

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David P. Bellamy

November 6, 2014

I have known many students who hate multiple choice tests also. I always thought they were a somewhat amusing silly game that tested nothing, when I was a student.

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 6, 2014
  
  The one I created tested listening comprehension and attention to terminology. So it wasn’t completely useless.
  
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Anonymous

November 6, 2014

There are on line programs which allow your computer or phone to check the tests for you (using the built in camera)- and do analysis on the question choices so that it is easy to see where students did well or didn’t. Some are free and the bubble sheets are free too.

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