Multiple-choice tests are actually making students worse at knowing what they don't know.
While open-ended questions force students to confront gaps in their knowledge, multiple-choice formats provide recognition cues that inflate confidence. This leads to a 'metacognitive' failure where students think they understand the material much better than they actually do, unlike generative tasks which offer more 'diagnostic' feedback.
Assessment Format Matters: Evidence for Differences in Metacogni-tive Resolution Between Multiple-Choice and Open-Ended Exams
EdArXiv · v8n5p_v1
Assessment format may influence not only students’ performance but also how they monitor and evaluate their own learning. This study examined how multiple-choice and open-ended questions are associated with different components of metacognitive monitoring in a real university exam context. A sample of 150 undergraduate stu-dents completed an exam including both formats and provided self-assessments (SSA) and confidence judgments (JC) for each section. Results showed that students achieved higher