A Novel Enhancement to Multi-choice question assessment

This paper describes a novel enhancement to the standard Multi-Choice Question (MCQ) type assessment. The new method utilises a time delay between students seeing the questions and when they are given the answers to choose from. During this period, students are encouraged to answer the question, as if they were attempting a constructed-response test. We argue that this modified test improves the ability of students to express their knowledge of the subject compared with a standard MCQ test. This is achieved while keeping the advantages of MCQ tests (e.g. efficient marking) that have made them a popular method of assessment. The details of how the enhanced MCQ assessment is to be delivered are explained, along with a description of the proposed qualitative and quantitative analysis of results. 1