Writing Quiz Questions

Effective questions can engage students in learning by helping them reflect on course content, develop problem-solving skills, form mental models, or practice foundational skills. Questioning focuses attention and guides study, reading, writing, communication, visualization, design, development, and other learning activities.

The main goal of this site is to provide easy-to-follow, quick-to-read guidance for creating questions of varied types such as matching, multiple-choice, short answer, and true-false.

Why Worry About Writing Quiz Questions?

• Knowing how to write effective questions is critical to constructing effective quizzes.
• The types of questions you ask influence what and how students study, read, practice, etc.
• The questions you ask should match what you expect students to learn.
• Questions should not give away the answers or be unreasonably difficult.

Definitions

• Selected response item types provide students with all possible answers and require them to select the correct one. Selected response type items include multiple choice, matching, and true/false and are typically harder to write but easier to score.
• Constructed response item types provide students with a prompt and require them to generate an answer. Examples include short answer and essay. Typically, constructed response items are easier to write but harder to score.