The usual multiple choice format has a lot of untapped potential. Students may think deeply about the one correct answer but pay only scant attention to the incorrect responses. But there can be as much value in reflecting on why a response is incorrect as there is in figuring out the correct one.
Educator Blake Harvard shares this template which asks students to go a little deeper with the wrong answers: Why might one have thought this the correct answer? Can you rewrite the question to make this the correct answer? How does this relate to other material we have covered in this class? In addition to taking out some of the guesswork intrinsic to the multiple-choice format, it engages students more deeply with more material. As Harvard says, “If you have 10 questions with 5 answer choices, the students could feasibly interact with 50 different snippets of material.”
