How to write good Essay Questions

Essay questions - you either love them or you hate them. There is no in between! These require written responses, which can consist of a few short paragraphs to thousands of words.

Also known as: long answer, open ended, subjective

Use Essay Questions to Assess:

• Comprehension of material learned
• Writing skills
• Evaluation
• Analysis
• User's ability to organize facts and ideas
• Vocabulary
• Problem Solving

Question Usage Ideas:

• Gain Feedback
• Gather information
• Comparison of two items
• Discussion

Advantages of Essay Questions:

• Test takers can elaborate and provide detailed answers
• Test takers are not able to guess and select an answer
• Can review individualized responses from each user
• Can be used for all types of subjects
• Takes less time to create questions

Disadvantages of Essay Questions:

• Takes longer to grade on paper
• Graded manually online
• Take longer to answer
• Can be graded unfairly
• Questions can be read differently resulting in not being able to answer correctly
• Will not cover as much varied content in a Test as other question types
• A user's writing skills could affect what they are trying to express