Multi thoughts on improving multis

Economics exams love multiple choice questions. These multis are supposedly designed to test student knowledge and often confuse the hell out of people. How can you help your students do better on these questions?

One strategy I use with my students is to do away with the answer categories. You can physically take them off or just cover them with a piece of paper.

Here, you’re asking student to stop jumping straight to the answer categories. Instead: ask your students to think about likely answers, prime their thinking, jot a few thoughts down, then look at the answer categories.

Let’s have a look at how this could work. Here’s a multiple choice question in its entirety.

Don’t give this to your students. Instead, just give them the question:

Ask them to list their thoughts. Maybe they start talking about people out of the labour force, about people who have given up on seeking work. Maybe they talk about people who are NOT classified as unemployed. All of this process stuff is good. Really good.

Then, put the answer categories back and ask them to answer the question.

The idea is to help students put a routine in place. I want students to stop jumping into questions and start by thinking carefully about the question.