Daniel Paul O'Donnell

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Multiple Choice Questions in Moodle

Here are some tips for the composition of Multiple Choice Questions in Moodle.

1. If students are allowed to mark more than one option correct and you intend to include at least one question where none of the offered options are correct, include as a possible answer “None of the listed options.”
   1. Do not call it “none of the above” since if (as you normally should) you have selected “shuffle answers,” you have no guarantee that it will be the final answer in the sequence.
   2. You should include this option in all questions in the set (including those for which some of the options are correct) to avoid giving the answer away when it appears.
   3. When “none of the listed options” is not the right answer, it should be scored at -100%, to avoid a student hedging his or her bets by selecting it and all the other answers.
2. If you anticipate having a question for which all the answers are correct, you do not need a “All of the listed answers,” since selecting all will give students 100%.
3. The correct options should be scored so they add up to 100%, of course!
4. Incorrect options (exclusive of other than “None of the listed forms”) can be scored in a number of different ways:
   1. So that the total for all incorrect options (except “none of the listed forms”) is -100% (this stops a student hedging his or her bets by selecting all options); if you do not have a “none of the listed options” answer, you almost certainly should score this way.
   2. So that each negative is the reciprocal of a correct answer, regardless of whether all the incorrect answers add up to -100%. Use this if you don’t mind that a student selecting everything except a “None of the listed options” might end up with part marks.

 

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