Crafting Effective Distractors in Assessments

Jay Parkes and Dawn Zimmaro share about learning and assessing with multiple-choice questions in college classrooms on episode 155 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Quotes from the episode

Tests don’t hurt students—people with tests hurt students.

—Dawn Zimmaro

It’s not the multiple choice question that is problematic … it’s about how the assessment can be used.
—Dawn Zimmaro

The whole goal here is learning, not assessing.
—Jay Parkes

Technology has really expanded our ability to do some assessments and diagnostics in ways we haven’t been able to do in the past.
—Dawn Zimmaro

Resources Mentioned

• Learning and Assessing with Multiple-Choice Questions in College Classrooms by Jay Parkes & Dawn Zimmaro*
• Retrieval Practice
• Retrieval Practice Tools
• Retrieval Practice with Pooja Agarwal
• How to Use Cognitive Psychology to Enhance Learning

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