6.2 Deriving meaningful insights from MCQs

Aligning distractors to relevant misconceptions

Aligning distractors with misconceptions can help the educators identify the areas of remediation required in a specific topic. Random distractors that are not related to the topic will make the MCQ unreliable as there will be no useful data gathered by the educators in deciding the next steps.

An effective MCQ provides us with reliable data on students’ understanding. It is constructed in a way that gives us meaningful insight.

And how do we go about this?

STEP 1: When we design the distractors of an MCQ, it is important to make sure they are plausible and related to the topic on which the MCQ is based in some or the other way.

STEP 2: Now we need to ensure that at least all or two out of three distractors align with a misconception that a learner can possibly have. This way when the learner selects the wrong answer then we can immediately know their misconception.

Let’s try to understand this further through MCQ #1 and MCQ #2 and MCQ #3