Handbook for setting up courses

UNION EUROPÉENNE DES MÉDEC INS SPÉC IAL I STES EUROPEAN UNION OF MEDI CAL SPEC IAL I STS Association internationale sans but lucratif – International non-profit organisation

6) Items can be written to allow the examinee to discriminate among options that vary in degree of correctness.

7) Achievement and progress (formative tests) can be compared from person to person, class to class and year to year.

8) As the bank of MCQs is progressively built up, the costs of assessment of knowledge become predictable and contained.

9) Electronic manipulation to vary the order in which questions are presented to the candidates reduces the chance of cheating.

Limitations:

1)

Constructing good questions is time consuming.

2) Frequently difficult to find plausible distractors (sometimes there is more than one defendable “correct” answer.)

3) Often the focus is on testing factual information (failing to test higher levels of cognitive thinking.)

4) Can be ineffective in assessing some types of problem solving situations.

5) Scores can be influenced by reading (and/or language) ability.

6) Structure may lead students to read more into the question than was intended.

7) Construction of high quality items places a high degree of dependence on the writing ability of the author of that question.

8)

May encourage guessing.

9) Do not allow the student to create their own answer (no information concerning individual thought processes on how an answer was arrived at.)

10) The examining body needs to own and keep electronically secure the questions and the correct answers (The hardware used in the exams must also be secure to maintain exam security).

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