Multiple choice tests having a “don’t know” option that provides a fractional point would reward honesty and let teachers know where students need help!
Multiple choice tests having a “don’t know” option that provides a fractional point would reward honesty and let teachers know where students need help!
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Horrible thought. Honesty isn’t what we’re going for.
Wrong answers let the teacher know that the student needs help.
Presumably, every incorrect answer indicates where students need help
This is an incredibly silly idea. If they get the answer wrong or don’t answer at all the instructor will know they don’t know the answer. Besides that what good does it do for the instructor to know they need help after the exam? The course is over it’s too late then.
That’s why negative scoring is used. Don’t know? Don’t answer.
Negative points for wrong answer, zero for no answer and points for correct
But teachers aren’t using tests to see where students need help. We learn a topic for a couple of weeks, we take a test, get a grade, then even if we failed the test we move on to the next topic that builds on the previous one.
It makes no sense.
You’re a student, you should know which questions you guessed and which questions you need help. Just learn to ask your teacher instead of needing to have your teacher come to you to help you study
Students know when they don’t know.
Teachers generally use tools like percent of class correct and a discrimination index to assess whether the content was grasped or whether a question is poorly written or misleading. A multiple choice question always has a probability that a student gets it correct by random chance. Generally, you aren’t looking to see if a student got every question correct, you are looking to see if they overall content was understood and then a big signal that someone didn’t understand anything is scoring near what they could achieve by random chance, 25%-33%.
If testing was meant to give effective pedagogical feedback there are many other things they could do to improve this.
And then you have people like my ADHD daughter looking to get boring tests over as fast as possible, so she’d just mark them all as that to end it quicker.
I had some exams like that. You could pick your answer and say if you were sure or not. Sure+right was Max points, then Right but unsure was partial credit, Wrong but unsure was neutral and Sure + wrong actually deducted points.
So would putting a non-graded indicator that would say “Yes I guessed”
I’m a teacher. That’s actually not a bad idea. Especially within the standards-based model.
i always had the idea of leaving it blank not affecting your grade/having a lesser impact but in return losing more points for incorrect answers. in real life i’d prefer to be told “I don’t know” over being confidently told something inaccurate.
Not using multiple choice questions is also an option
I’m surprised to see that this hasn’t already been mentioned: multiple choice sections in AP (Advanced Placement) tests implicitly work like this. A wrong answer is worth -1/4 (or -1/5 if there are five choices), but unanswered questions are 0, so the expected total score from fully random answers is 0, and it’s not worth guessing unless you can eliminate at least one answer.
Kid using a Sharpie on a Scan•tron test = needs some extra attention
Multiple choice tests are a terrible form of assessment regardless, but certainly not good for gauging the class. That should be done well before you get to testing.
You act like the current education system allows for helping individual students instead of failing them.
(Assuming US)
I disagree. Because it is valuable learning for a student to assess risk and judge things based on logic or similar examples. Like if you dont know an answer doesnt mean that you are entirely in the dark. Lets take a very very simple question as an example “Which one of these is not a Mammal: A) Maned Wolf B) Stoat C) Fluke D) Pika” So this question say you know what a mammal is but dont know the animals in the question. Well from logic you can remove the maned wolf because well wolves are mammals. Bringing the options down to 3. And then you have to make some logic connections. So like Pika say your into Pokemon you might associate that with Pikachu and think Thunder Mouse so mammal (Pika’s are a type of rabbit from Asia ish), so you might remove one. And then you are left with stoat and fluke, so you are left with a 50/50 and based on your previous knowledge you might be able to answer the question. And learning how to make an educated guess is an important thing to do.
90% of the teachers I’ve ever had basically treated a blank answer on a multiple choice test this way. No fractional point but you weren’t penalized for it (e.g. +1 for correct answer, -1 for incorrect answer, 0 for left blank, so a twenty question test had a potential score range of -20 to +20).
The physics GRE used to have something like this. Not answering a question resulted in no points being awarded. But selecting the wrong answer would actually subtract points from your exam! It was a nightmare and I’m glad they finally changed it. Basically, getting a question right was +1 points. Marking a wrong answer was -1/4 points. All questions have 4 multiple choice questions. You really only benefited from guessing if you could narrow it down to two possible answers.
I took an engineering ethics course as part of my ME program, and for all of our tests you would get 1 point if you got the correct answer, no points if you answered wrong and half a point if you didnt answer. He explained that he does not want to reward people for guessing and getting it right, because that doesn’t show that you actually learned anything.
Fast forward to finals week, and due to my own stupidity I mixed up the date of the final and missed it. When I went to talk to him and ask if I could still take it a thought occurred to me. I had done the math and figured out what scores would get me which grade. I need at least a 70% to keep my A, but a 50% would still give me a B. Since this was my last final of the semester I asked him if the half credit rule applied to the final. He said yes and I asked him if I can just write my name on the test and take a 50% because I didnt want to waste his time having to keep an eye on me while I took the final, which he said sure.
Not having multiple choice tests in the first place would be way better than trying to improve them in any way.
Tests, like the AMC 12 use a model where you are deducted points for the wrong answer while leaving it blank has no effect
You guys are getting multiple choice tests in school?!
Nah, kids would just mark idk on all the answers because.
I can’t remember how many points he gave for it, but one of my professors gave us points for “idk” on certain assignments as long as valid work was shown.
My university had a multiple choice system where random guessing would net you zero points. With four options, checking the correct one would net you full points. Checking two options with one being correct was ~50% points. And so on.
Checking multiple incorrect options, with none correct, also got you more negative points. Not checking anything got you zero points. It worked great!
I think one test I took had incorrect multiple choice answers count as a slight negative score, so not filling in an answer counted as “I don’t know enough to even make a reasonable guess”.
100%, and I don’t care about the fractional. I went to college from a highschool the completely fucked me when it came to math. I took the placement exam and placed too high because I guessed right in a lot of the questions. Had to downgrade classes twice before I was at a level I could understand!
An idk answer would have saved so much time and effort.
Teacher here, lazy kids would pick this for the whole test making you uncertain. Some will pick anything randomly and still get answers correct. But give them a IDK…no chance
This exist(ed?)s in the SATs. Incorrect answers are negative points such that it’s better to leave blank than to guess. Or maybe that was the GRE? Anyway, I remember that being a thing
This is the greatest idea I’ve ever seen in here.
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What would the fractional point be? 50%? Then the student would be guaranteed a score of 50% that’s not passing, but they would also realize that all they need is 2 or 3 answers they know are right and just get the rest at 50% and get a passing grade.
The smart students wouldn’t do that but they don’t need the help this system is offering. The students that need help will tend to let you know anyway in other ways, but the students that want to game the system will do that. So basically your idea just won’t work unfortunately. At least I don’t see how it would help the right students.
I’ve had tests like that for an international math competition. 2 points for the correct answer, 1 for I don’t know and 0 for a wrong answer. I did 2 idk and got 98 points. The winner at my school scores the full 100 points. He guessed multiple questions correctly for those last few points.
So while yeah it would encourage honesty I know that won’t always solve the problem of students lying.
Also, yes I’m still bitter about that loss. Only the number 1 student of each school went to regionals and of those the top 3 goes to nationals. He came pretty high in the nationals. I still think I could’ve achieved that as well, but I didn’t play the guessing game.
But yeah, as the lowest level high school from the lowest grade that participates I was pretty proud of the result.
Counterpoint: How will we raise the next generation of gamblers?
Tests are the day a student is told they need to know things.
Every day preceding that is the opportunity for a student to say “I don’t know”
When I taught, there were a few particular students whose understanding of a concept I could faithfully use as an indication that something wasn’t taught clearly.
For those most part, “IDK” on a test really translates to “I didn’t care”.
It would have to be a pretty good fraction. At minimum it’d need to be 1/X where X = number of other answers. And even then, you can probably narrow down the question to two or 3 answers.
So honestly it’d probably need to be worth at least half to a third of a point assuming the question is worth one point.
I see that as more useful for open ended questions then anything.
You get 0 points for not trying – you get fractional points for trying and being wrong.
I vaguely remember someone a long time ago telling me it’s the SAT was scored kind of that way, you got less points off for leaving it blank then you did for getting it wrong or something. Never looked into it