Final Exam Question Recomendation

[HigherEd7]

How many multiple-choice questions are reasonable for a final exam? What are your thoughts on a comprehensive final exam? Thank you

[Parasaurolophus]

All my exams are comprehensive. I don't see the point of only testing them on stuff from after the midterm.

As for the number of questions... I mean, it depends. How long is your exam? Is it all multiple choice, or do they have to do other stuff? How tricky are your multiple choice questions? It's a question of balance.

[dlehman]

Apologies for the snarkiness - but my answer is zero.  It is truly the way I feel and teach.

[kaysixteen]

It certainly depends on what the subject, and the course, is.  MC questions can indeed be written in such a way as to be useful.  Or not.

[Puget]

It depends, as others have said.
For a 3-hour cumulative final, I have 60 MC questions + 3 multi-part short-answer (up to paragraph length) questions. Most students finish before time is up. These are knowledge and application questions, not involving calculations (which of course changes time requirements dramatically).

[jerseyjay]

Which of the following best describes your course?
A. An introductory course with hundreds of students whose emphasis is factual knowledge.
B. An small upper-level humanities course focused on analyzing texts.
C. An asynchronous online course for a general education subject.
D. A gatekeeper course whose purpose is to test readiness for future study.

Forgive the snarkiness, but I hope you do not write your mc questions like your post, i.e., vague and undirected.

What is the subject? What is the course? Is the exam only mc or is a mix? What is the purpose of the exam? How much time do you have? How many exams do you give? Are there other assignments?

I spent several years writing mc questions for a living and I can say that, well, they are complex. If constructed well, they can be a valuable source of information. Writing really good mc questions takes time and effort that, personally, I would rather spend on other things (including grading the exam). If poorly written, mc questions are not all that useful.

In my opinion, to make the mc valuable, a test needs at least 20 questions and optimally between 50 and 100. You should have some easy ones, and some hard ones. In my experience, too many mc questions tend to be too hard, or too easy, or too confusing, so they are not valuable and lead to endless bickering with the students. For these reasons, I tend to avoid mc questions.

There are of course reasons to give mc questions. To test objective knowledge; To compare the performance of one section with another; to help keep down grade inflation.

However, as I said, for me, they are not worth it. If my courses required a large amount of memorization or just factual information, they might be worth it. Personally, I would never make an exam just mc questions, however.

[dismalist]

I never, never, used multiple choice questions. All my exams were very short essays, never more than 2 1/2 hours, usually two hours. Anywhere between 70 kids [occasionally far more] and 20. The courses were not introductory. Always the same principle: They gotta know stuff, but they gotta think, too.

It took me a while to dose all this right. Practice and learn.

[HigherEd7]

Which of the following best describes your course?
A. An introductory course with hundreds of students whose emphasis is factual knowledge.
B. An small upper-level humanities course focused on analyzing texts.
C. An asynchronous online course for a general education subject.
D. A gatekeeper course whose purpose is to test readiness for future study.

Forgive the snarkiness, but I hope you do not write your mc questions like your post, i.e., vague and undirected.

What is the subject? What is the course? Is the exam only mc or is a mix? What is the purpose of the exam? How much time do you have? How many exams do you give? Are there other assignments?

I spent several years writing mc questions for a living and I can say that, well, they are complex. If constructed well, they can be a valuable source of information. Writing really good mc questions takes time and effort that, personally, I would rather spend on other things (including grading the exam). If poorly written, mc questions are not all that useful.

In my opinion, to make the mc valuable, a test needs at least 20 questions and optimally between 50 and 100. You should have some easy ones, and some hard ones. In my experience, too many mc questions tend to be too hard, or too easy, or too confusing, so they are not valuable and lead to endless bickering with the students. For these reasons, I tend to avoid mc questions.

There are of course reasons to give mc questions. To test objective knowledge; To compare the performance of one section with another; to help keep down grade inflation.

However, as I said, for me, they are not worth it. If my courses required a large amount of memorization or just factual information, they might be worth it. Personally, I would never make an exam just mc questions, however.

Thank you for your response. I appreciate your feedback. As you stated, the reason for my vague and undirected post is that I have no idea who I am talking to. Like other members in the forum who post, they are particularly hopeful of engaging with faculty members who can provide valuable feedback. I agree that writing test questions is a very time consuming and I know that the textbooks comes with test banks that students can find on the internet or course hero...

[Puget]

As you stated, the reason for my vague and undirected post is that I have no idea who I am talking to. Like other members in the forum who post, they are particularly hopeful of engaging with faculty members who can provide valuable feedback.

I'm not seeing a "reason for my vague and undirected post" here. . .
If you want valuable feedback, you need to provide some background information and ask more specific questions here. For example, if your original post had been something like this (with the variables filled in) you would have gotten much better responses:

"Hi, I'm teaching a [level] course in [general subject area] with a [length] hour final exam. My goal for the final is for students to demonstrate [learning objectives]. I plan to us [mix of question types]. For this type of exam, in your experience about how many multiple choice questions can students comfortably complete in that time?"

[Langue_doc]

OP, did you ask your department/colleagues? How does the department handle final exams for the course you're teaching?