Introduction ~ Teaching Experience ~ Areas of Interest
Teaching Statement ~ Learning Through Diversity ~ Professional Development
One problem I’ve noticed while tutoring elementary/middle school students is that, when presented with multiple choice assignments, they will often guess what the answer is. When I explain why that answer might not be correct, they will continue to guess, and aren’t able to explain their choice. Although those assignments may also have short answer questions, they might not encourage deeper understanding of the content. My question is: if students are required to explain their multiple choice answers, will they gain a better understanding of the topic, and subsequently do better on multiple choice exams?
If I were to choose a student population, I would choose a middle school science class. I could have some of the classes focus on multiple choice style assignments and assessments, without needing to explain their choices. The other classes would be encouraged to explain their choices, without necessarily having those explanations graded. We could go over those explanations in class and have a discussion about the content.
The main data would be collected in the form of exam results, seeing if any classes performed better than the others. I would also like to collect survey data on how confident the students felt in their answers and in their understanding of the class content. It would also be nice to compare short answer questions from each class to see if explaining multiple choice answers would also improve the quality of short answer responses.