Is elimination marking a viable alternative for standard setting in multiple choise assessment in higher education?

CLI Fellowship of Steven Verheyen

The Community for Learning & Innovation (CLI) gives lecturers from Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) the opportunity to apply for a fellowship. With this fellowship, they research educational innovation, or carry out an educational project.
On this page you can read more about the CLI Fellowship of Steven Verheyen (ESSB) about whether elimination marking (EM) is a viable alternative for standard setting (SS).

Erasmus University Rotterdam employs standard setting (SS) for its multiple choice (MC) examinations. SS invites students to answer all exam questions, but requires them to meet a raised standard because they might get some answers right by chance. SS thus encourages students to guess, which is questionable from a pedagogical and measurement perspective. It gives the signal that it is better to take a wild guess than to admit than one is uncertain or unknowledgeable. Guesses also introduce noise, deflating the accuracy, reliability and informativeness of the exam scores. We will investigate whether elimination marking (EM) is a viable alternative for SS. In EM, examinees eliminate the answer alternatives they consider mistaken. It rewards students for displaying partial knowledge, does not penalize them for expressing doubt, and allows for more differentiated feedback.

Researcher
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Steven Verheyen is an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences. Prior to working at Erasmus University, he was a member of Institut Jean Nicod and the KU Leuven Laboratory of Experimental Psychology. His work on individual differences in language use is positioned at the intersection of quantitative psychology, philosophy of language, and cognitive linguistics. He has expertise in the fields of concepts and categories, semantics, and psychometrics.

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