Education is evolving rapidly, with advanced technologies and new strands of study making an undeniable impact. However, our assessment methods often remain widely unchanged, and as such may fail to fully assess the skills and understanding students need in the 21st century.
For example, while multiple-choice quizzes have their place, they’re not ideal for measuring higher-order thinking or creativity. Traditional tests that rely on written text may also be inequitable for students with SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities).
Introducing innovative types of test questions is one way to update your assessments. New technology now allows you to measure students’ progress and understanding in more interactive and thus more engaging ways, while ensuring they’re accessible for all.
In this article, we’ll outline some options for adapting your assessments, and how technology can help you implement them.
Key Takeaways
- Traditional forms of testing like multiple-choice quizzes make it difficult to test higher-order thinking and creative problem-solving, key skills for the modern world.
- Interactive simulations such as virtual science experiments can test a student’s understanding of complex situations with multiple variables.
- Multimedia elements such as images and videos can help you assess student understanding even where learning needs impact their ability to process text.
- Asking students to interact with the screen through drag-and-drop, sliders, graphic gap matches, or hotspots, can make the assessment more engaging.
Limitations of Multiple Choice Questions
Multiple choice is a popular question type for several reasons: the tests are quicker to administer than essay-based questions, they’re less intimidating for students, and they’re easy to grade quickly.
However, they have a number of limitations, including the following:
- Because multiple choice tests restricts students to a set of predefined options, your understanding of their progress is less granular. For example, with a more open question type, like a slider, you might be able to see that an incorrect response was nevertheless close to the answer you were looking for.
- Some students may just guess the answers, leading to an inaccurate reflection of their understanding.
- Multiple-choice tests can be very monotonous, leading to reduced engagement in learners who spend their lives in the multimedia digital realm.
- Most multiple-choice tests are limited to capturing basic recall or simple problem-solving but not higher-order skills like creativity, collaboration, or critical thinking.
- This type of question also doesn’t typically capture the process students went through to arrive at the answer—often a crucial part of assessing whether they truly understand.
Relying solely on one question type throughout an assessment means that your data analysis will be limited, too. Instead, varying your testing methods and employing modern digital reporting and analytics tools to gauge the efficacy of different question types will give you richer data about students’ learning needs. For example, students who struggle with text-based questions but succeed on video questions might benefit from more image-heavy teaching.
6 Innovative Types of Test Questions
When developing alternative assessments that move beyond traditional models, it’s important to choose the question types that will give you the best insights into student learning. For example, certain types may make the test more—or less—accessible for students with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND). With the right testing platform, online assessments can be customized with technology-enhanced items (TEIs) to match individual student abilities.
Below, we’ve selected 6 innovative question types you might want to try when creating your next assessment.
1. Interactive simulations
Interactive simulations immerse students in scenarios that mimic real life—for example, a virtual ecosystem where students can demonstrate and explain the impact of changing certain variables. Through the use of testing platforms that integrate with portable custom interactions, it’s possible to embed these types of questions into online assessments.
The image below shows an interactive assessment simulation in TAO that has been developed by Geogebra, an organization that provides open source software for teaching and learning science and mathematics, including a repository of free assessment items. Using TAO’s Geogebra PCI, assessment authors can easily incorporate a vast variety of these engaging questions directly into a TAO exam.
PCIs are particularly effective in assessing problem-solving and higher-level thinking skills such as evaluation and data analysis. These tools not only make online assessments more engaging but also foster deeper understanding by connecting abstract concepts to practical, real-world applications. This can ultimately lead to improved performance through enhanced understanding of complex ideas.
You can also use simulative questions to assess collaboration, an essential skill in students’ future lives. For example, a custom TAO PCI developed for the French Ministry of Education invites students to collaborate with a chatbot to write a story. The assessment measures their reasoning and negotiation skills as they accept or reject the chatbot’s suggestions.
Learn more about the 17 built-in question types that are available by default within TAO.
2. Match & associate question types
Using interactive technology, students are asked to drag and drop items on the screen. For example, this might be dragging the words into the correct order for a modern foreign language test; matching images as pairs, or words with images to label geographic features; or creating a timeline to assess historical understanding.
Similarly, graphic gap match and associate questions ask students to select the correct images that might fit into the main picture or correspond with a written text. For example, they might need to choose the foods belonging on a plate, the correct equipment for a science experiment, or the flags found on a continent.
These types of test questions can help you assess students’ knowledge and conceptual understanding, without disadvantaging those students who find it harder to process text. The visual stimulation can also be more engaging.
3. Media enhanced questions
Multimedia can be a great tool to help you assess students’ simple comprehension, even if they have difficulties with reading—the visual cues can be an effective way for them to access what is being presented. For instance, you might ask students to watch a short video and make predictions about what might happen next in a filmed science experiment.
A great example of how video questions can enhance assessments is the New York City Department of Education’s (NYCDOE) update to their language proficiency exams. Using TAO, they incorporated video clips into their online assessments to give students more exposure to authentic examples of the language.
Given that most students will be highly familiar with video content, these question types can feel more relevant to real life for some learners. This can increase motivation and interest, ensuring students complete the assessment to the best of their ability rather than switching off. It can also help students retain more knowledge due to the more memorable format.
4. Hotspot questions
With a hotspot interaction, students must click on part of an image, such as choosing the correct bone in a skeleton, selecting a country on a world map, or choosing the right household item in a photograph. Hotspot questions can also simulate real-world scenarios—for example, by asking medical students to identify worrying areas on an X-ray.
In addition to being an engaging way to assess spatial awareness and simple recall, you can also test more complex thinking by asking students to respond to more developed prompts. For instance, you might ask them to indicate where problems might arise in a supply chain if a disruption occurs at another point.
Hotspot questions have obvious advantages for students who have English as an additional language (EAL) or disabilities that might impact their abilities to process text. They can help to lessen test anxiety, making it more likely that students will complete the assessment in full.
5. Slider questions
Sliders require students to drag an element on the screen along a scale. You could ask them to indicate a percentage, a temperature, or a whole number—particularly useful for questions in mathematics or science. Similar to a slider, you can also a use likert scale to ask students about the extent to which they agree or disagree with an idea.
Unlike true-false or multiple choice question types, a slider gives students more freedom to select any response along the continuum. This allows them to demonstrate more nuanced or fine-grained understanding than when they are constrained by rigid pre-defined categories.
Furthermore, students may become demotivated with multiple choice, leading them to select randomly from the set. With a slider, on the other hand, students may feel more engaged as they’re able to express their full understanding or the precise intensity of their feelings and attitudes.
6. Audio interactions
Final Thoughts
There are clear reasons to move away from solely using simple multiple-choice as a testing method. These traditional question types can’t accurately measure the higher-order skills needed for 21st-century life and work, like creativity, collaboration, problem-solving, and operating in multimedia contexts.
Innovative visual types of test questions like sliders, hotspots, and drag-and-drop, can make assessments more accessible for students with language processing difficulties. Moreover, video and multimedia elements can more fully engage the learner. And interactive simulations can help students navigate real-life scenarios, stretching their creative thinking and collaborative skills.
FAQs
What is an example of an innovative assessment method?
A good example is an interactive simulation. This might model a complex system or experiment and ask students to predict or explain the impact of changing variables.
How can innovative question types help make assessments more equitable?
You can make assessments more accessible to students who struggle with processing text or have English as an additional language by using more visual content. Students can also interact with the screen without needing to read and write.
Are innovative question types more relevant to the modern world?
Yes, hotspot, drag-and-drop, and slider questions types can help students engage with real-life everyday problems and scenarios. Also, video questions can appeal to students who use social media frequently.
