Less choices

As I head into my senior year at IU, I am faced with many tough choices that will determine the direction of the next few years of my life.

Once fall comes I will be applying for jobs, determining how big to make my name on my resume and just trying to avoid crashing on the final lap of my college career, like JR Hildebrand did during the Indy 500.

You’d think making choices would be easier by this point.

In six semesters I have averaged about five classes, and the majority had four tests of 50 multiple choice questions.

In total, that means that I’ve made 6,000 choices over my academic career and more are on the way.

I’m not proposing that multiple choice tests enable students to make life decisions; but rather that an essay format of testing which covers the concepts and their connections are far more rewarding because it builds confidence.

The multiple choice format encourages the minimal amount of work to be done and requires less interaction with the information to achieve a good grade.

Students shell out hundreds of dollars on books so they can memorize 80 bolded words for a test, but it’s gone once they get through their first power hour.

When professors give in-class essay tests, students prove they know the material or they don’t, and the exam score is a better reflection of their knowledge on the subject.

During an essay test, it is made blatantly clear who didn’t put the hours in as they sit there while everyone furiously empties their brains onto their paper.

In this environment, there is no debating whether or not the myth that “when it doubt, choose answer C” is true.

Admittedly, my experience is because most of my class sizes are extremely large and it is therefore most efficient to test students’ ability through the use of Scantrons.

This is why I believe the quality of the academic product that universities sell cannot improve as class sizes grow.

While the ability to remove subjectivity from grading exams creates a solid standard, it hinders the students.

Some answers are “more correct” than others, but those don’t exist in multiple choice exams and so students lose the ability to prove they know the material as well as add personal views.

Ultimately college classes should inspire new ideas, and that is where multiple choice format falls flat on its face.

­— agreiner@indiana.edu