This mini-site has presented you with information and examples designed to help you construct more effective quiz questions and to select appropriate question types for your purpose. Each question type has advantages and disadvantages along with pitfalls that should be avoided, and including a variety of question types in your quizzes will allow you to assess all levels of student learning. Thoughtful planning, alignment with objectives, and careful writing are paramount to creating effective quiz questions that challenge your students. Employing questions that have the potential to measure higher-order thinking skills is key to increasing the rigor of quiz questions, and evaluating the reliability and validity of your quizzes is important for overall quality and for developing useful metrics about your students’ performance.
IT Learning and Development would like to thank the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence and Education Technology Services at Penn State for contributing to previous versions of the content included in this document.
IT Learning and Development staff that contributed to this document include: Brett Bixler, Kris Benefield, Abigail Zlockie, and Jeff Puhala.