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Improve Your Quizzes With These Do's And Don'ts

AllisonLaMotte's avatar
10 years ago

If you’re like most e-learning professionals, much of what you do revolves around designing and building quizzes. But what goes into creating an effective quiz? Here's a helpful list of do’s-and-don’ts to keep handy whenever you're designing a quiz.

Do

  1. Let your learners know up-front how many questions there are in the quiz.
  2. Include questions that are in line with learning objectives.
  3. Limit distractors (incorrect choices) to one or two per question.
  4. Design performance-based quizzes that test application of skills and not simply factual recall.
  5. Create custom quizzes to engage your learners.
  6. Write quizzes that teach while they test by providing relevant feedback for incorrect answers.

Don't

  1. Ask questions about content that was not covered in the course.
  2. Overuse True/False and Multiple-Choice questions.
  3. Ask negative questions, e.g., "Which one of these should you not do?".
  4. Include confusing or implausible distractors.
  5. Incorporate trick questions.
  6. Shuffle numbered answers; they should be written in numerical order.

Wrap-Up

There you have it! I hope these do’s and don’ts will be helpful to you the next time you’re creating a quiz. Did I miss any major do’s and don’ts? Feel free to share in the comments section below. 

Looking for more helpful resources on quizzing? Be sure to check out these articles:

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Published 10 years ago
Version 1.0
  • It is a good list. I have a question about one of the suggestions in the "Do" section. The suggestion is to limit distractors to one or two per question. Previously, I have read that it is best to have 3-4 distractors per question to limit the likelihood of the test taker guessing the correct answer. One of the downsides of more distractors is the time required to develop plausible distractors. Is that why it is suggested here to limit the number of distractors?
    • AllisonLaMotte's avatar
      AllisonLaMotte
      Staff
      Hi Bob,
      Yes, that's why! In my opinion it's better to have 1 or 2 truly plausible distractors than many more distractors that are obviously incorrect.