I completely agree. Multiple Choice questions have a purpose in much the same way textbooks can still be used as a supplement rather than driving curriculum or instruction…if written to assess the UnGoogleable (sp?) pieces of information, they serve a valuable purpose. I also like MC questions for exit slips or other checks for understanding.

I’m a Social Studies teacher. Over the past two years, I’ve been using SHEG’s Historical Assessment of Thinking model to develop more valid assessments. Like Trivia Crack, so many multiple choice questions are just that…trivial. This is actually what I’m presenting on this summer on the INeLearn Summer of E-Learning circuit. See you out there.

Hi Tracy! I’ll have to check out some of these extra resources you’ve added … thanks! Ditching multiple choice … good question. I’m all for “non-Googleable” questions, and I know that multiple choice/true-false questions can be misleading. I also know that, as teachers, we’re very overstretched. In my book, I talk about choosing to cheat and how we only have a finite number of hours to do an ever-growing list of valuable things. I don’t think we should totally do away with multiple choice personally. Tech is allowing us to give students instant feedback, which can be more valuable than open-ended questions because the feedback reaches them in the moment they’re still in test-taking mode, and that feedback is immensely powerful. Multiple-choice questions, when done right, can still be challenging and require students to think. I don’t want to use it all the time, but I think it’s still an option with some important upside. I’d love to hear your thoughts as well!

I second many of these. Flubaroo is excellent for all our Google Forms assessments, and I’m obsessed with Kahoot. I also love Showbie and Socrative simply for giving students immediate feedback on a variety of assessments. Also check out Stanford’s “Beyond the Bubble” program which is inspiring educators to reassess our typical assessment strategies! In the same way that you and I ditched our textbooks…should be ditching multiple choice?

Tara

Hi Matt.
You are absolutely right.
The right way in the long run is to learn the students better use of their tool box, whether their toolbox is a computer or a carpenters or bricklayers toolbox.
Just for instance learning how to search for information can be a massive improvement in their life.

But the transformation from paper to digital education gives some advantages and some challenges, and some of both are unexpected 🙂

In Denmark – allthough one of the most digitized country in the world – some of the current isssues are regarding some classes putting away computers and going back to paper and pen, as it seems this gives students better learning, and research showing that cellphone – prohibiting gives better learning.
( translate if you like http://kortlink.dk/gsr9 )

I believe that the right way is a combination of digital and analogue, as you also have mentioned before.

Thank you for a great blog 🙂

Good list from you as well, John! I’ll have to check some of those out. Thanks for adding them!

Jesper — I do like Quizlet and make it available to my students. I like that students can make the flashcard sets too.

As far as that “new way to cheat,” I think this highlights a couple of things. First, if questions can be searched in a text and answered that quickly, I would argue that we need better questions instead of disabling the search feature. Second, having a search command is part of today’s digital life. Instead of taking that tool away from students, maybe we can develop tasks that help them improve their use of that skill. Instead of basic comprehension questions, I’d rather see questions that have students analyze the text, compare/contrast, etc. … higher order questions. If they need to use the search to find evidence to back up their statements, I’m fine with that.

Just some thoughts.