As always, let’s begin by ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION:
Why do we really dislike multiple choice exams?
It might be that most people dislike multiple choice exams because of the consequences attached to them – not because the exams are in a multiple choice format. Everyone reading this blog has taken a multiple choice exam in the last week. Let’s think about the grocery store. Blake goes to the grocery store to buy cereal. When Blake gets to the cereal aisle, there is no table with ears of corn or stalks of wheat for Blake to produce her own cereal. There is no table with various sugars and syrups for Blake to add to her cereal production process. Even the grocery stores with cereal dispensers that allow customers to mix cereals do not let the customer start the cereal production process from raw material. The typical process for buying cereal is to walk down the cereal aisle and do what? Choose a box of cereal from the multiple boxes available on the shelf. Now, some customers have different ways of making these choices. Some may like only certain types of grain, sugars, or even colors of the cereal boxes. Others may read every detail of the ingredients as they make their cereal selection. And yet others may have a favorite cereal that they pick every time they go to the grocery store. The one thing the customers have in common is that they are picking from multiple options. They are not creating cereal, they are not writing an essay about their experience, and they are not doing collaborative cereal picking with customers from aisles 4, 5, 9, and 10.
There’s another thing they all have in common. When they get to the cash register (this would be analogous to the grading of multiple choice exams), the consequences are very low stakes. What’s the worst thing that can happen? The customer gets home, tries the cereal they chose from the multiple choice exam taken at the store on cereals, and decides they don’t like it…. so they don’t buy it again. The manager doesn’t meet the customer as they exit the grocery store and place them in the remediation exit group for picking the WRONG cereal. There’s no media write up about how the customer performed poorly on cereal picking that day. Furthermore, the customer IS allowed to graduate up to the next level of breakfast foods, regardless of what cereal they picked. High stakes consequences seem to drive the negativity around multiple choice exams.
Let’s try another example. Most Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Fortune 500 companies meet periodically with their senior staff. However, when the CEO conducts such meetings, they probably do not start constructing graphs and charts of information in the middle of the meeting. What does the CEO do? They review ideas from the staff that addresses a specific problem – and then they do what? They choose from the multiple options given to them. Now they may ask for additional options, but they probably don’t start doing the work of their staff. They discern between the options given, and either pick one or ask the staff to bring back modified options to choose from. Now, the stakes are a little higher here. The CEO can lose their job if they choose poorly, so this is a much higher stakes multiple choice exam. On the flip side, though, the possible positive consequences the CEO may receive might outweigh the possible negative consequences – kind of a reward/risk model. When the CEO chooses well and the company does well, then increased salaries, bonuses, stock options, etc. can be awarded. Remember accountability means consequences – both negative and positive.
I’m not advocating for or against multiple choice exams. I just think we are missing a lot of information about what they do, what they don’t do, when to use them, and when not to use them. The point being that we all take multiple choice exams everyday and the level of consequences associated with them drives our attitude toward them. Maybe one last example. The multiple choice exam of buying a car is much more stressful than the multiple choice exam of buying a box of cereal. Why? Because the stakes are much higher. Cars cost more than cereal and the customer has to be prepared to live with their car choice for several years. Choose poorly and the customer may have spent a lot of money on a car missing those all important cup holders.
Finally, let’s take the position that we should not give multiple choice exams in schools. Most, if not all, other testing options are less efficient, take more time for teachers to administer and grade, and introduce a high level of subjectivity. For those who think we do too much testing, multiple choice exams are probably the least time-consuming. Back to my hypothesis: I don’t think it’s the format of multiple choice exams that we dislike, but rather the consequences that have historically been attached to them.