When should you choose open-ended questions versus multiple-choice questions?

How do you ensure your online training sticks? Exactly, by creating effective quiz questions. This allows you to test knowledge and identify what needs to be reviewed. At the same time, your participants actively practice the material, which increases the likelihood of retention. However, it is important to ask the right questions. Each question type has its own pros and cons. In this blog, we discuss three common question types that are ideal for your e-learning.

What types of quiz questions can you create?

1. Creating multiple-choice questions

Also known as "multiple choice." You provide the student with a number of possible answers, from which they must choose one. This question type is ideal for testing factual knowledge.

Pros:

• It takes students relatively little time to answer the question. This allows you to test a lot of knowledge in a short amount of time.
• Multiple-choice questions target specific knowledge. As a course instructor, you use them to select the most important material, helping students determine what is essential to remember.
• Convenient for you: in an online learning environment like Pluvo, student scores are calculated automatically. This saves a lot of grading time.

Cons:

• The phrasing of the answer options must be very precise. If the "wrong" options are implausible, you give the correct answer away too easily.
• Plus, if the options can be interpreted in multiple ways or are not clearly "right" or "wrong," you won't get accurate results.
• Finally, this question type doesn't allow for much depth. Open-ended questions are better suited for that.
• If the student guesses, they still have a decent chance of getting it right. If you want to verify this, you can repeat questions in a slightly different format.

A variation of the multiple-choice question is one where multiple answers are correct. Another variation is the "yes-no" question. For example: "Are you allowed to park here? a) yes, b) no."

2. Creating open-ended questions

Do you want to test insight or check if your student can apply the material themselves? Then the open-ended question is the best option.

Pros:

• You give away much less than with multiple-choice questions. This gives you a good picture of what your student knows and understands.
• Suitable for questions where there isn't just one correct answer.
• You test not only the student's factual knowledge and insight but also their analytical skills and ability to argue a point.
• Ideal for questions where the answer is subjective, such as opinions and preferences.

Cons:

• This question type does result in more grading time.
• The phrasing of your question must be very precise. If you aren't careful, you might ask something other than what you intended, or worse: the student might not understand the question.

Tip: specify a maximum number of words or characters to prevent unnecessary rambling.

3. Creating "fill-in-the-blank" questions

With "fill-in-the-blank" questions, you have your students type in the missing words in a sentence. For example: "In the trias politica model, the state consists of three branches: the ___ branch, the ____ branch, and the ____ branch." This question type is suitable for testing factual knowledge, such as names, dates, and terminology.

Pros:

• Because you don't show the correct answer (as you do with multiple-choice questions), the student really has to come up with the answer themselves. This places a greater demand on their knowledge.
• Just like with multiple-choice questions, there is only one correct answer. Scores are therefore calculated automatically, which makes grading a piece of cake.

Cons:

• Like the multiple-choice question, this type is less suitable for testing insight.
• You need to be careful to ensure that only one correct answer is possible.

Note: in the example, it does not matter in which order the student lists the three state bodies. In such cases, ensure that all possible combinations are marked as correct.

Creating more question types

Of course, these are not the only question types. In Pluvo, you can also choose the 'match' question, where you have to drag related elements to the correct spot. Or the sorting question: here, you drag elements into the correct order. These question types are similar to the multiple-choice question, but are more interactive.

Besides creating quiz questions, there are also very different ways to test knowledge. Click through to read more.

Plenty of options for variety! Discover it for yourself.