The good, the bad, and the ugly of multiple choice.

I am sure all of us who went to high school in New York can remember taking the NYS regents exams. The good thing about the exams was the amazing feeling of "it's summer" when you finished them, the bad thing about the exams was the stress and anxiety going into the exam and the ugly thing about the multiple choice regents was the fact that we just practiced taking old regents after old regents. I felt like because the exam was multiple choice the teachers assumed that by practicing over and over and over and over multiple choice questions which were used in the past it would up our chances of passing the regents exam. At the time I really did not think much of it, just like ok... time to take another regents. But really we weren't learning anything except getting familiar with questions that could be asked or trying to figure out why a multiple choice opinion was incorrect.

I have never been a good test taker. Especially with multiple choice because I seem to always over analyze the questions and then the answers and just never feel like I am given the opportunity to prove what I know. That is very frustrating. I can admit when multiple choice tests are written correctly and the questions are appropriately asked, it is pretty nice to have a multiple choice test and just rock out with the confidence you are answering the question correctly. I am really not a fan of teachers who try to trick the students which funky wording, which is so easy to do when writing a multiple choice test.

I feel that with multiple choice tests it is a very thin line between too easy of a question, a question assessing knowledge, and a trick question. A lot of time, thought, and effort needs to go into the construction of a test to create questions which will accurately assess the learners knowledge. The good about multiple choice is a test taker has a chance, hopefully if they are not sure of an answer something will spark their memory and they can recall the correct answer. The bad is that same exact thing. If someone did not study, but has a good memory and just is a good test taker, they may actually end up receiving a better grade than someone who has really studied and put forth the effort and has the knowledge, just gets confused by the questions. The ugly is the horrible questions some uneducated people can make and think they are assessing knowledge when in fact they are just asking confusing ridiculous questions.