We recently wrote about how we attempt to get our students on board with retrieval practice via classroom quizzing. Clearly, this topic is close to our hearts. But if you do a lot of quizzing, the grading starts to mount up. One way to get around this is to use multiple-choice questions, which can be graded quickly and efficiently. The great thing is that research suggests multiple-choice questions are just as good at improving later test performance, which we also blogged about.

However, a downside to this is that multiple-choice questions take more work up front to ensure that they are good quality. This can be tricky, but fortunately, a whole lot of thinking and synthesizing has been done by teachers and researchers on this topic. Here are a few helpful resources for putting together good multiple-choice questions, organized in order from shortest (if you’re pressed for time) to longest (when you want to really explore the topic – summer reading list, anyone?):

1) Writing Good Multiple Choice Test Questions by Cynthia J. Brame, Center For Learning, Vanderbilt University

A brief article, focusing on just the highlights, including how to construct an effective stem and effective options.