In my youth I associated multiple choice questions with competitive examinations.The objective was to weed out most applicants to make a short list from where recruitment may be done.In a multiple choice question, an examiners main objective is to confuse a student.For example ,
Concepts are a part of
a) theory
b) research design,
c)hypothesis
d)a,b,c
If multiple choice question are used to eliminate candidates for certain positions, they serve the purpose well.
But now multiple choice questions are being used by Sociology Faculty in class tests .In Burdwan University,West Bengal, India, Choice Based Credit System was introduced following government recommendations.An essential part of this system is internal tests.In such internal tests multiple choice questions are being set. Would it be wise to use multiple choice questions to assess knowledge of students ?
I can say, that, based on my own lecturer experience, the question with a multiple possible choice is only adequate, when there are hidden at least two answers, or weighted benchmark is associated with set of possible answers and their election sequence. For example: Q:"You have embedded C written application, which operates with a lot of bugs. But JTAG-Debugging is not available. Choose the possible action, which helps you to detect bugs ..." a) ... b) ... h) ... (where two choices are totally wrong, and two are totally right).
Could you remove the C++ tag from your question. It is misleading and make people like me lose their time trying to figure out in what way I could help you before figuring out that there is no C++ at all in your question...
Prof Martin, I could not understand your statement. I only gave an example of how multiple choice questions are framed.
Yes, it is good to include objective type questions in a question paper. They are useful for testing student's knowledge, aptitude and critical thinking. If a questionnaire is set according to contents taught in the class, teaching method adopted and assessing students' mental abilities and capacities (which is done during teaching activity) then it would be an extremely fruitful assessment. In my opinion, an evaluation of students' knowledge should be done objectively as well as subjectively.
