One of the things I found most interesting about that recent education thread was the near-universal aversion to multiple-choice testing among Europeans. There are very few commonalities throughout Europe, but that certainly feels like one of them. I’m wondering if there’s any country where they actually are found and what other forms of testing are common in your country. Which ones do you personally enjoy or detest?
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You mean at school?
There are lots of types here, depending on age and subject.
Both oral and written tests are common.Written tests might be multiple choice sometimes, but usually not… actually writing is more usual.That is, they give you a question and you write an answer.
One thing I think is a lot more common here than in many other countries is the use of individual oral tests in the classroom.
In some countries this is rare,or used only for languages for example.
Here it’s pretty common in almost all subjects.
I’d say having to write the answer (with or without detailing the reasoning – right answer with wrong reasoning doesn’t give you points…) is the most common, but it depends on the subject too.
Multiple choice is often not liked by students because it’s common to have a negative point system in them. For example you have 20 questions, giving the right answer gives you +1, no answer 0, wrong answer -0.5. It’s to discourage guessing, but I personally don’t think it’s a good system, it’s stressful and you just keep doubting everything… Better to have a question where you just write what you know and can get a few points even if you don’t know the exact answer.
Oh, I could write a whole essay about it, because it really depends on the subject and on the school level. I’ll tell you how it looked in high school and in university.
In high school I had really demanding teachers (which is a good thing but also a bad thing). Most of the time we didn’t have any multiple-choice tests. You got a set of tasks and you had to write down what you knew. For example “describe the life cycle of some kind of plant”. If we had multiple-choice tests, it would be too easy, sometimes incredibly easy.
Maths and physics were obviously all about math tasks. If you find the solution, it’s good. If you don’t, then at least you can get some points if you write down some equations and show that you at least know something. Biology was full theory: you write what you know. Chemistry was 50/50, some of it was theory, some of it was math tasks.
Foreign languages were different, obviously. Most of the time you had tasks where you had ABCD options and you had to choose one. Or you had to write down correct answers.
And also the classic: “zapraszam do odpowiedzi”. It happened only in primary and middle school. The teacher would pick a random number on the student list and ask the given student to come to the blackboard and the student was examined on something for a grade. Nobody normal liked this type of evaluation.
In university, however, there were some multiple-choice tests, but it depended on the subject:
* In all types of general Chemistry (inorganic, organic, physical, analytical) you had to write what you knew. No ABCD questions whatsoever, because it would be too easy.
* Biology with Genetics and Botany? My year had ABCD questions, before that it was like chemistry, but after some time it went back to how it was before me.
* Maths and Statistics were obviously math tasks, no ABCD questions.
* Physiology and Pathophysiology were ABCD, and we had to mark the answers on the answer sheet which would later be scanned by the computer to count the points and give the final score for each student. Immunology was ABCD too, but without computer scanning.
* Exams in Drug Chemistry and Pharmacognosy were ABCD, but the “smaller” tests throughout the year (they weren’t small) were “write what you know”. E.g. “describe the alkaloids that come form this and this amino acid” or “describe the essential oils that are used in gastrointestinal illnesses and symptoms”. If your answer was not satisfactory, you didn’t get a good grade. And yes, the teacher’s grade was subjective. 🙂
* Microbiology and Pharmacology were like this: you have questions and four answers (1, 2, 3, 4). And now, this is the real multiple-choice: A. 1, 2, 4. B. 1, 3. C. 2, 4. D. 1, 2, 3, 4. E. none. Good luck with that. It wasn’t easy, but sometimes you could work out what’s the correct choice.
* Exam in Biochemistry was ABCD, but the three humongous colloquia were the only oral forms of evaluation and you had to memorize whole chapters of the textbook.
* Other subjects were just ABCD and nothing else.
But that’s what Pharmacy looked like. I’m sure people from other degrees have different experiences, so I’m waiting to see what it was like in other degrees.
PS. Back in the day, when my teachers were studying, oral forms of evaluation were the most prevalent ones. Today there are barely any, because: a) there’s no time, b) it’s kinda subjective, c) doing written tests and exams is more convenient. To be honest, I’d prefer oral exams.
Multiple choice tests are common outside of education, eg driving tests, aptitude tests for some jobs etc.
But for serious school exams, and university exams, multiple choice is very rarely used.
I think that’s about right. Formal education is supposed to develop your overall knowledge, which is difficult to assess via multiple choice.
Nearly every test are on paper. Either classic (for which we must write down every step) or multiple choice depending on the instructor. Oral tests are mostly done at primary and high schools in a way similar to quizzes, more common with past generation. 2000’s kid myself.
Official entrance exams like university entrance exams have always been multiple choice. Here, schools have no say over admission procedure or available places. So, these tests are absolutely competitive at the top places.
Note: Had only one oral exam at university. It was for a senior-level econometrics course.
Written tests here in Hungary often have at least one multiple choice task, sometimes it’s a true or false situation (only one answer), sometimes multiple answers are correct and you have to find all. But that’s not the whole test. Most of the time there is a written task, like a short essay. In history classes, you need to fill in a blank map for example. In foreign languages you often have to fill in words from a list at the correct place in the correct form (so you have to conjugate the verbs, declinate the nouns if applicable).
Some teachers in Hungary like to start every class with some people going out to the chalk board and doing an oral test, either purely oral or in math for example solving an equation on the chalk board.
In elementary, our Danish exams had a reading comprehension part that included some bits of text and multiple choice. Our Spanish (and I assume French) exams in high school had a short bit with that too. But all these also had parts where you actually have to do something. I think the aversion to multiple choice is that it doesn’t really tell you if the student knows their stuff. You could theoretically pass by simply crossing random answers. With forms where you have to actually engage, that risk basically disappears
As for what I like, I am a fan of our 24-hour exam model you can find in subjects such as history. You get a question or topic, and then have 24 hours to prepare an answer or presentation on it
I’ve taken exactly two tests (in school) with multiple choice questions (that I can remember). Both cases were in a general knowledge course in uni, and in both (it was two tests in the sane course) it was just a small part of the test. It was so relaxing not having to write page after page of calculations for once.
This might vary very much depending on which school you go to.
But the middle school and high school I went to was very fond of oral presentations. Some written tests, but then mostly questions where you had to discuss a lot. Not just a quick: who was the king during that time period?
School: usually written “open questions” (“what was the situation of X”)
University: well, oral open questions: you pick 2-4 questions, you have 15-30 minutes to organize your thoughts/make some calculations and go. Then, examiner asked a few other questions. I knew one who open his syllabus at a random page, read the title and say “ok, talk about this”.
Multiple choice is very rare. It occurs almost exclusively in very big tests that have a lot of people, for example the nation-wide test to enter medical school, that on average every year has 60k entrants (for 10-12k spots in medical school).
Our written tests are generally in the form of open questions, in which you have to write a paragraph or two. For calculation-based tests such as maths or physics you have to show the entire calculation process.
The teacher/professor asks you questions in front of the whole class and you answer, using the blackboard if you need to calculate or draw schemes.