Teaching with Clickers : Types of Questions

Preparing the right questions for clicker use is just as important as learning how to operate the technology.  By writing effective questions, instructors will ensure a closer connection between clicker questions and course learning objectives (Beatty, Gerace, Leonard, & Dufresne, 2006).

Different questions elicit different responses and require different levels of cognitive engagement.  Knowledge-level questions ask for simple recall of facts and data without assessing them critically, whereas analysis, synthesis and evaluation questions require critical thinking and judgment. When faculty are simply assessing students’ basic understanding, a knowledge-level question may be appropriate.  But when faculty wish to engage students in thinking critically about course content, a knowledge-level question may fall short of reaching the goal.  For example, Mazur (1993) found that students in his physics class could manipulate equations but had limited understanding of the principles behind the math.  As a result, he focused on concept questions that asked students to interpret data or explain equations rather than recall facts or do calculations.

In addition to writing questions that measure the given learning objectives, faculty may need to learn techniques for writing effective multiple-choice questions.  Practical suggestions from Wit (2003), Beekes (2006), and Draper and Brown (2002) for writing effective questions include the following:

1. Distinguish between students’ knowledge of jargon and their understanding of concepts;
2. Create wrong answers (distracters) that seem very logical or plausible to students to prevent them from easily eliminating wrong answers;
3. Limit the number of answer choices to five or less; and
4. Consider including “I don’t know” as an answer choice to prevent students from guessing.

More resources for writing better multiple-choice questions are available at the CRLT website [1]
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tsgi [1].

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