GoKawiilThe Problem With Guessing
Both multiple-choice (MCE) and free-response exams (FRE) don’t necessarily show how confident the student is in their answers—they just show the final answer or the thought process, respectively. But that means the student can just guess and get it right, even if they don’t know for sure that the answer or thought process is correct!
Take MCEs. For a four-choice question, the student could improve their odds of guessing from 25% to 33-50% chance just by eliminating one or two answer choices. While this demonstrates some knowledge about what the answer isn’t, isn’t necessarily proof that they know what it is, even if they choose correctly.
Or FREs. A student may have some idea of what the question is asking, but could take a guess at which formula/process to apply and still get it correct. (This is much less likely than on a MCE, but still possible based on personal experience.)
This is unfair for the students who truly know the answer, but get scored the same as the guesser. What would happen if students had to note down how confidence they are that they have the correct answer?
Brier Scores for Exams
Introducing Brier scores (BS). The formula for a BS (as related to exams) is:
where:
N is the number of questions on the exam
t is the question number
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