Before I start my series of posts on other ways of checking understanding beyond MCQs, I though I would share some basic principles of these tests themselves if you do need to use them, in hope of helping trainers being able to spot good and bad ones, and to be confident to provide their own feedback to question writers!
Principle 1 – Avoid using trick/catch questions, or overly obvious or lazy answers
Such as:
All of the above
None of the above
These answers which are nearly always the correct answer, are either too easy, or confusing because they seem too easy, and in the case of the first one they are unlikely to be technically the only correct option, as all the others are often true too!
Usually with questions that have one of these two options, they are almost always the correct answer, and therefore don’t require any knowledge or skill in the subject being tested.
Whenever you see these options, please provide feedback to the tester that they are unacceptable, poor questions.
More coming soon.
"The Creative Trainer" - by David Newsum 