True / False questions as a learning rather than an assessment strategy

True/ False questions should not be used for graded assessment because:

  • you will never know whether your learners have achieved the target learning outcome (LO) measured by these techniques.

  • Students may use reasoning skills to answer them correctly while in fact, they have not achieved that learning.

  • it is a mistake to promote students or trainees on basis of doubtful assessments even if using few True/False questions.

How should we use True/ False questions then?

They should be used as part of unmonitored and ungraded formative (not outcome) assessments because they:

  • guide learners to revisit the content to actually know the right answer even if they ticked the correct option.

  • engage learners through interacting with the course content.

  • do not bear scores so the risk of crediting learners who have not achieved the LOs is not an issue.

  • allow learners to correct the course and outcome of learning without detrimental consequences.

  • cover a wide range of content.

  • are auto-corrected, which provides immediate feedback to the learner.

  • save instructors’ time as learners experiment with them as many times as they wish.

  • trigger discovery learning when linking both correct and wrong answers to hypermedia (learning tracks).

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