UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN; MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

(NOVEMBER 15, 2021)

G D Goenka Group organised a virtual workshop on ‘Designing Multiple Choice Questions’ on  November 15, 2021. Around 360 teachers and Principals attended this workshop and participated in this course. From GDGPS, Sector 48, Gurgaon, Ms. Apurva Rathi and Ms.Tanya Gera attended the course.

Ms. Neeta Rastogi, principal of a renowned Delhi School took this workshop. The workshop was organised to make the teachers understand the pattern of designing MCQ based upon a circle of understanding compiled with the Bloom's Taxonomy in a backward designing approach of lesson planning.  It focused upon enduring understanding (EU) to solve the problems and take the learning forward by being able to apply the same beyond their textbooks. The workshop focused upon passing the attributes to children like critical thinking. 

While designing the questions, the series of 4 steps should be kept in mind which will help the children to align with the correct answer. The 4 steps include learning outcome, specific assessment objectives, circle of understanding, and skill and then the final question needs to be drafted.

The workshop also highlighted that well designed MCQ (which is also not very easy to construct) allows testing for a wide breadth of content and objectives and provides an objective measurement of student ability.

To draft a well-designed MCQ, it should have 4 components aligned with the learning outcome, which includes a Lead sentence, Stimulus, Stem, Distractors and Key. To make it clearer, example questions from most of the subjects were used.

The Session was followed by a Q & A session. Overall, it was an enriching experience. It will surely help us to improvise our designing of multiple choice questions.