{"id":10700,"date":"2011-06-24T13:04:40","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T18:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=10700"},"modified":"2011-06-24T13:04:40","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T18:04:40","slug":"multiple-choice-questions-overrated-researcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2011\/06\/multiple-choice-questions-overrated-researcher\/","title":{"rendered":"Multiple-choice questions overrated: researcher"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Joe

Joe Engemann is helping teachers write better test questions.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s a device we remember from our younger years as we pored over pop quizzes.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the answers were obvious. Often, one was \u201call of the above\u201d or \u201cnone of the above.\u201d Conventional wisdom told us that when in doubt, we should pick C.<\/p>\n

But the multiple-choice question, with its firm role in our education system, might not be doing students or teachers any favours, says Joe Engemann<\/a>, assistant professor in the Faculty of Education<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Engemann has studied the multiple-choice question to find that it is not always the best assessment of how much a student has learned. The \u201cdistractors\u201d (wrong answers) are often obvious, the correct answers often written with eloquence and detail, and \u201call of the above\u201d or \u201cnone of the above\u201d are often employed. And when students circle one of four letters on a test page, it\u2019s not necessarily indicative of how well they\u2019ve processed the information, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost multiple-choice questions are low-level questions,\u201d he said. \u201cThey test for knowledge and knowledge only. If we focus on knowledge only, students will get to the university level without the ability to think and analyze.\u201d<\/p>\n

Engemann\u2019s latest mission is to help teachers write more effective test questions. Questions that require students to think and analyze, such as the essay question, offer a better assessment of how much a student has learned, Engemann said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeachers are well intentioned but through no fault of their own, they\u2019re not giving assessment that is valid or reliable to the degree that it should be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Engemann, who wrote Classroom assessment: concepts and applications<\/em> with fellow professor Tiffany Gallagher<\/a>, has taken what he has learned about assessment to the school system. This year, he facilitated a new workshop with teachers in the Halton Catholic District School Board regarding how to write questions that better assess what students have learned. Teachers then take what they\u2019ve learned and teach it to other teachers.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeachers approach me later and say \u2018This is what we need,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt makes a difference in their day-to-day practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Education is a lifelong passion for Engemann. He taught elementary school for 17 years in the former Lincoln County Catholic District School Board. He taught mostly Grade 7 and 8 math, science and physical education, and also taught in the board\u2019s gifted program.<\/p>\n

He entered academia because he had strong ideas about education, but found it hard to implement them as a teacher, he said. Now, his research makes it into schools across the province and impacts teachers\u2019 daily lives.<\/p>\n

He is a big advocate of mentorship. He founded the Brock Mentorship Program<\/a>, which for 15 years has matched gifted students from Niagara high schools with Brock researchers for a semester of intensive learning. He also co-founded Bridging Our Worlds Through Science<\/a>, which sees Aboriginal high school students from the Grand Erie District School Board spend two days participating in science activities at Brock.<\/p>\n

He is also program chair for the assessment strand of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, past president of the Canadian Association for Teacher Education and former program chair for the science education group of the American Educational Research Association.<\/p>\n

In his spare time, he plays hockey and lacrosse, and coached both sports locally for 35 years.<\/p>\n

Engemann also received a Brock University Advancement Fund research seed grant<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Engemann is teaching teachers how to better assess what their students have learned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,1,5],"tags":[32,3325],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10700"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10700"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10803,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10700\/revisions\/10803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}