Multiple Choice = Google

No big surprises here, but this blog post does a good job explaining why doing well on multiple choice questions does not prepare students for college.

I took this sample AP test and Googled the 40 questions exactly as written. It took about 2 seconds to find the answers – and that was checking a couple of pages to verify the answers. Thirty-five of the 40 questions were easily answered this way. The other five required information from a chart or photo.

I asked the students at Carleton to find the answers to a couple of these questions. Obviously, they had the same result. The students, many of whom had taken plenty of AP classes, were shocked. The professors were very amused.

A few weeks after this, I had the opportunity to talk with a history professor at Oberlin College, and asked him what he thought about this and AP in general. He said that they often need to reteach students how to read and study history when they arrive at Oberlin. Students who have been through AP classes are geared to read for minutae and minor detail. They haven’t been taught to read for concepts, context and the big picture. —My Wired Life.