Constructive Multiple-Choice Testing (CMT) System

A new computerized testing system, called the Constructive Multiple-choice Testing (CMT) system, is introduced. The system combines short-answer and multiple-choice (MC) formats by asking examinees to respond to the same question twice question-by-question, first, in short-answer format, and then in the MC format. An empirical study using the system is reported. Eighty-one 6th grade students (12 years old) were tested on social studies with the CMT system. As expected, students got higher score in the MC format. The correlation between the short-answer and the MC format was medium high (.71). In a subsequent analysis, it was found that whereas those who got intermediate scores in the short-answer part scored relatively higher in the MC part, those who got high or low scores in the short-answer part scored relatively lower in the MC part. Another interesting finding was that there were some cases where students chose a wrong option, even though they typed in the correct answer for the short-answer part. Implications of the results and possible applications of the system are discussed.