November 2025

It’s that time of the year when instructors finalize their exam questions. We thought we’d share some resources that popped up in our feeds you might find helpful. 

The first is an article from AEM Education and Training with ten strategies for writing high-quality multiple choice questions. This is written from a medicine and health sciences perspective. One highlight from the article- research shows that three answer choices is the “sweet spot” for multiple choice questions. Three compared to four choices has a minimal effect on item difficulty and it decreases the burden for exam writers. 

Educator's blueprint: A how-to guide for developing high-quality multiple-choice questions 

The second resource comes from the University of Central Florida Center for Distributed Learning. It gives you examples of multiple choice questions written at different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. 

University of Central Florida's Examples of Multiple Choice Items at the Levels of Bloom's Taxonomy

Want more guidance? The SMHS Center for Faculty Excellence is hosting a workshop on writing multiple choice questions on Monday, November 17th from 12-1pm. 

We talk a lot about Bloom’s taxonomy, which gives us language for writing learning objectives in observable terms. Essential for getting your course cleared through the Curriculum Committee, the taxonomy is even baked into the Quality Matters Rubric. But perhaps you’ve wondered- is there more to learning than just Bloom’s? 

Well, allow us to introduce you to Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning. While Bloom measures learning hierarchically by levels, Fink’s taxonomy is divided into domains of learning. Particularly relevant to health sciences, the human dimension and caring domains in Fink’s give us a way to codify learning about oneself and others, and the development of new feelings, interests, and values. 

If you’re interested in incorporating Fink’s domains into your learning objectives, we recommend checking out this matrix from Syracuse University, which provides action verbs that align with both Fink and Bloom.

Do you understand the Average Student Workload statement required in our syllabi? We get that it can feel like a bunch of legalese copied across semesters never to be actually read. But we’d like everyone to understand its purpose.

Average student workload statements are required by MSCHE, GW’s accrediting body. The goal is to inform students about how much time they should expect to spend on the course over the semester. This includes both time spent in-class or interacting with the instructor (direct instruction) and time spent on coursework outside of class sessions (independent learning). It’s telling students This is how much time you should expect to spend on this course outside of class sessions or Here’s how much time you should expect to spend on this course to earn the X number of credits. 

The numbers are determined by the number of credit hours and the number of weeks of the course. No matter how many weeks long, 1 credit = 37.5 hours of work. For most courses there will be a 1:2 ratio of direction instruction to independent learning. This applies to in-person, hybrid, and online courses, though what constitutes direct instruction will vary with the course modality. 

While the makeup will vary with different course formats and lengths, our goal is to work to ensure that our courses meet the minimums while also not asking students to do much more work than is expected for the number of credits they will earn. But don’t worry too much– they are averages. 

Assignment of Credit Hour Policy (GW’s full guidelines)

Workload Estimator 2.0 (Calculator for estimating time averages for readings, writing, exams, and other class activities) 

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