Two-tier multiple-choice questions as a means of increasing discrimination: Case-study of a basic electric circuits course

One of the widely used tools for summative assessment in engineering education is the multiple-choice test. A two-tier multiple-choice question, in which the first item is a fact-based question and the second item is a reasoning-based question, permits higher-order thinking skills to be evaluated. The study described in this article characterised the discrimination level of two-tier multiple-choice questions in the final examination of the course, Electric Circuit Theory, intended for sophomore electrical engineering students. Six hundred and thirty-two students from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, participated in the study. According to the findings, the discrimination level of two-tier multiple-choice questions is good and higher (with large effect size) than that of their one-tier counterparts.