I have always administered essay exams. I think essays are the only effective method to evaluate historical arguments and trends. I teach in broad strokes and concepts and essays are the only real way to explain big ideas.
But students HATE essays. They HATE HATE HATE essays. Essays cause fear and anxiety. They think essays are harder.
But they're not. Students never see that essays give them more leeway. I have explained over and over again that multiple choice leaves no room for negotiation. With an essay, I can interpret student nonsense. When they write that Teddy Roosevelt created the New Deal to end the Great Depression, I know that they meant Franklin.When they say Douglas MacArthur spread fear and paranoia about the spread of communism in the 1950s, I know they meant Joseph McCarthy. But if it was a multiple choice question and they circled A. Douglas MacArthur instead of B. Joseph McCarthy, they're fucked. Still, the message never gets through to them. Essays mean writing and writing is hard.
I decided to conduct this experiment knowing full well that I would have to include multiple choice questions. I loathe multiple choice. And I mean LOATHE. Multiple choice perpetuates every incorrect myth about historical instruction. That learning history is just about memorizing names and dates. (Which oddly enough, I am terrible at remembering dates.) Memorizing a bunch of random names and dates does not communicate the relevance of history. And truly, multiple choice does not accurately assess what I want my students to learn. I want my students to explain, not to recite verbatim. I would rather have my students tell me how the Great Depression scarred American families for generations than to know what year the SSA was passed.
However, students love multiple choice. They beg for multiple choice. I tried to bias them toward written responses. I reiterated over and over again that I cannot be lenient with multiple choice. Multiple choice is right or wrong. But here I am, writing multiple choice questions.
So to gauge student responses, I created an online survey that listed five types of questions and asked students to rank them in order of preference (www.surveymonkey.com/s/MQ7KBPC). And no surprise, multiple choice won. I decided to include a mixture of multiple choice, identifications, and essays, as a sort of experiment. I have a few findings.
First, I have literally never included multiple choice question on a test before. As a result, I had no idea how much work it was to write multiple choice questions. Turns out, I hate multiple choice questions even more than before. I discovered that multiple choice just shifts the workload. Writing multiple choice puts all the mental burden and work onto me up front. And writing the questions is tricky. They need to be hard, but not too hard. Complicated, but not too complicated. Clear and understandable but tough enough. It's a nightmare. But then in the end, the grading is a breeze. The work is all done up front with multiple choice.
Writing essay questions is tough, but different. When envisioning essay questions, you think about the huge range of information covered across multiple lectures and imagine how students can connect the material and concepts. The bottom line is, essays require them to explain the information. Essays put the onus on the students. Essays are harder for the students. It's true. Essays are harder because rather than simply guessing or picking whichever answer sounds familiar, the students need to show they understand the material independently.
But then, in the end, essays are more work for me too. Because of the grading. Ugh. The fucking grading. I have to read all those essays. And they are something. Some essays make me have that moment like the teacher in Christmas Story, while some make me question my entire career.
The other fascinating finding is that all the three types of questions scored exactly the same on average. Meaning, the mean of multiple choice questions, identification, and essays was almost exactly 44% in all three classes. This is not to say that all students scored the same. Some students BOMBED the multiple choice and NAILED the essays. Or vice versa. Or got equal grades among all three. It was just fascinating.
I guess the method of evaluation is all three. I do not want one group of students to fail because of the essays or another to fail because of the multiple choice. Multiple evaluation methods allows multiple methods of success for the students.
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