Experiences of assessment using multiple choice questions on a first year engineering module in electrical engineering

This contribution will report on, and evaluate, the use of multiple-choice questions, in both continuous assessment and terminal examination modes, on a first year module in electrical engineering at Dublin Institute of Technology. The author’s experiences are that multiple-choice questions tend to be student friendly (e.g. given a choice in a terminal examination, students will opt to attempt the questions with multiple choice parts). The author has used the assessment method over three academic years, and some assessment data is reported and analysed in the contribution. The pedagogical approach is explicitly pragmatic