Questions are one of the most effective learning tools easily made available to both educator and student. I like to describe answering a question as using an external task to manipulate a cognitive behavior. Whatever the fancy models and descriptive language used to discuss cognition, learning is fundamentally about thinking. Answering or attempting to answer questions requires thinking and the type of thinking can be manipulated by the type of question asked.
One of those fancy labels used to describe a certain category of thinking is retrieval practice. Despite the many research studies focused on retrieval practice and its benefits (e.g., it is better to engage in retrieval practice than the typical study behavior students do without any guidance), it seems difficult to get educators and learners to see the development of retrieval practice activities or to voluntarily spend time engaged in retrieval practice as a productive activity. I have no explanation. Perhaps it just seems too easy or maybe the process by which it works is not obvious.
Answering questions is about much more than memorization. This has been shown to be the case even when the question task simply asks for the recall of a term, name, or definition. I will probably try to explain this in detail at another time, but for now understand that the effort to retrieve activates other information related to the specific item of information to be retrieved. In other words, remembering or trying to remember one thing makes us think about related things. We may use these other things as part of the effort to retrieve (e.g., remembering a face in an effort to remember a name) or this can work in the opposite way. We recall the name we want, but also visualize the face and recall other information about that person. Bringing a bunch of related stuff into our awareness (we call it working memory) tends to encourage the discovery of new relationships. We likely call such discoveries understanding.
Directing thinking with multiple choice questions.
Anyone who has ever been a student has experienced, many different types of questions. One basic distinction is between what might be described as short answer and multiple choice questions. For all of you flashcard lovers, the typical flashcard is a short answer type question and if you make and use yourself, you must judge whether the answer that you silently brought to mind is correct or incorrect. There is nothing wrong with this as a learning task, but there are also advantages in multiple-choice items which offer some advantages in shaping thinking through the answers as well as the question stem and allow for automatic scoring. Scoring is obviously important for student evaluation, but the data generated can also be useful for simply guiding learning. Digital flashcards offer some interesting opportunities for both short answer and multiple choice study activities.
I usually think of short answer questions as easiest for students to create for their own study effort. Multiple choice questions are not typically that easy for educators to create, but they are typically in a better position to do a good job with this type of question understanding the broader context of the content and the different ways information could possibly be used. Again, once created and delivered in a digital format, the multiple choice questions easy to distribute and easy to use. Perhaps it is useful to have students experience teacher created activities within the same environment students use to create their own activities. It is important to encourage students to develop their own study strategies and actiities.
I have used Flashcard Deluxe as an example for many years when discussing study activities with teachers. I have decided the multiple choice option for this tool is challenging to figure out on your own. There do not seem to be online tutorials that explain the process of creating this question format. I offer my own approach in the following video.
One final observation. Study questions seem to moved on from files shared to students (e.g., Flashcard Deluxe) to online activities. I see the efficiency in the online approach, but the file-based approach seems most appropriate for student created activities. I understand by my own logic I seem to be saying that MC activities created by educators are moving online, but some educators may still prefer to create and distribute activities to student devices.
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