ELECTRONIC MCQs WITH NO RIGHTORWRONG ANSWERS

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ELECTRONIC MCQs WITH NO RIGHT-OR-WRONG ANSWERS

• George MacDonald Ross
• Director, PRS Subject Centre
• Assessment Network, Leeds, 3 June 2008

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Programme

• How students should think while reading a text
• Rationale for an MCQ
• Demonstration of example MCQ

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How students should think (1)

• I teach Kants Critique of Pure Reason
• Reading a difficult philosophical text isnt like
  reading a novel
• Students arent taught how to read
• Even if they were taught, they need hands-on
  practice

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How students should think (2)

• Most sentences are problematic
• Neither totally incomprehensible
• Nor totally straightforward
• A skilled reader will consider
• Different possible interpretations
• Reasons pro and con each interpretation
• Reasons pro and con whether the text as so
  interpreted is right or wrong

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How students should think (3)

• Face-to-face teaching of these thinking skills
  would be expensive
• An electronic MCQ is expensive to develop, but
  costs nothing to run thereafter
• It cannot be used for summative assessment, but
  is purely a formative tool

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Features of the MCQ

• Attached to a significant but ambiguous passage
• Linked web pages in simple HTML
• Three levels
• Page with different possible interpretations
• Pages with reasons for and against each
  interpretation
• My comments on each reason

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Outcome

• Students explore all the pages in any order
• They acquire a feeling for the plurality of
  possible interpretations and reasons
• They come close to the simultaneous thinking of
  different possibilities and reasons in the mind
  of a skilled reader

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Sample MCQ

• http//www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/GMR/hmp/modules/
  kantmcq/p19/p19frame.html
• The same method can be used for arguing about
  whether the passage, as so interpreted, is good
  philosophy or not

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Thank you for participating

• George MacDonald Ross
• Department of Philosophy, University of
  Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
• g.m.ross_at_leeds.ac.uk
• http//prs.heacademy.ac.uk