The What, How and Why of Multiple-Choice Assessment Questions

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I am currently participating in a 3-Week Course by Patti Shank on how to "Write Learning Assessments" focusing on writing multiple choice questions (MCQs) that are valid and reliable. The course has a great group of people who have lots of insights to share! If you don't already know or follow Patti, you need to change that right now! She is a workplace-learning expert, instructional designer, researcher, and author who shares evidence-based practices that promote deeper learning. 

During Week 1 of the course, one of the things that came up in the group discussion was how to distinguish between lower-level assessment questions and higher-level assessment questions as they map to lower-level and higher-level cognitive skills.

Now, I have written my fair share of MCQs! In my current work, I lead and facilitate competence development projects, which includes designing competency-based assessment exams for trades/ apprenticeship programs. I work across many sectors and have developed assessment/certification exams for Power line Technicians, Residential Construction Workers, Shipbuilding Workers, Saw Filers, Hairstylists, Servers, etc. Currently, I am working on a Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) assessment pathway for Early Childhood Educators. Across all of these projects, I may have written well over 2000 provincial certification exam questions (summative assessments) and reviewed more than 10,000 questions written by technical writers.

A quick way that I use to distinguish between a lower-level and a higher-level assessment question is to look at whether it is a what, how or why question.

• A "what" question will typically ask to recall, identify, define, describe, etc. which are all lower-level learning objectives. It is important to note that "what" questions may be phrased as what, which of the following, when, how much, how frequently, who, where, etc. 
• A "how" question will tend to focus on step-by-step procedures or steps or phases in a process. For example, how will you do something, what will you do next, how will you apply a principle or a guideline, how will you calculate something, etc.
• A "why" question will focus on analyzing, problem-solving or troubleshooting-type objectives. For example, justify, compare and contrast, evaluate, categorize or rationalize, etc.

Needless to say, there is more to mapping cognitive learning objective levels to appropriate learning assessment questions. But generally speaking, as we move from "what" to "how" to "why" questions, we are moving from assessing lower-level cognitive skills to higher-level cognitive skills.