Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:4397] RE: Can multiple choice questions promote higher order thinking in e-learning?
From: Charles Adamson (adamson@myu.ac.jp)
Date: Tue 25 Feb 2003 - 04:38:16 MET
From: "Charles Adamson" <adamson@myu.ac.jp> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:4397] RE: Can multiple choice questions promote higher order thinking in e-learning? Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:38:16 +0900
Yasmine Howard wrote:
Is it possible to provide multiple choice questions in a constructivist
environment, that encourages higher-order thinking? I tend to argue that
assimilating multiple choice questions in a constructivist learning
environment would encourage surface learning, as students would be forced
to answer specific questions relating to the topic and be given specific
answers.
On the other hand, if the questions do not force students to recall answers
replicated in the courseware, surely a level of analysis/information
synthesis/evaluation (higher order thinking) of the information is required?
I certainly claim no expertise in regard to Bruner's ideas. I teach English
as a foreign language and as far as I can tell, whether or not
constructivism applies depends on the model of language that you are working
from. In my case, constructivism does not apply in its totality, so I have
not pursued the ideas in detail. There are too many other pertinent areas to
devote my time to. With that said, I would like to suggest that multiple
choice (MC) questions can be used to do other things then simply have the
students recall information.
One common type of MC question used in language testing is to give the
testee a choice of titles for a passage. It seems to me that this will
require deeper processing than simply recalling data. For one thing, the
passage is available to the testee.
In the nursing English courses that I have developed, we use a specially
written novel and each approximately 2,200-word chapter, including testing,
uses 4 and one half hours of class time (three 90-minute periods during a
single week). The testing is done in the final 30 minutes of the class time.
The students must answer 50 5-choice MC questions. The students are allowed
to use the novel and a dictionary so the answers are not the result of
simple recall, although on some questions this may help. Many of the
questions involve the need for much deeper processing. For example, the
students may be asked to give the character's reason for doing something
that was simply described in the text. Or the students may have to supply
the logical outcome of some action. Simple recall of facts is eliminated by
the students' use of the original text while solving the MC questions.
At present this program is not developed into a CALL program, but I am
hoping to do this sometime in the future when my teaching and committee
workload is lightened a bit.
Charles Adamson, Ph.D.
Professor
School of Nursing
Miyagi University
Japan
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