What are some best practices for conducting distractor analysis in online learning platforms?

1 Define your criteria

Before you start analyzing your distractors, you must decide which criteria you will use to measure their quality. Common criteria include difficulty, discrimination, frequency, and functionality. You can use item analysis, item response theory, or classical test theory to calculate these criteria. Additionally, depending on your learning objectives and test specifications, you can set different thresholds or benchmarks for each criterion.

2 Use online tools

Online learning platforms often have built-in tools or features that can help you conduct distractor analysis. For example, Moodle has a quiz statistics report that shows you the difficulty, discrimination, and frequency of each distractor. Canvas has a quiz item analysis report that shows you the same information, plus the functionality of each distractor. Blackboard has a test and survey analysis report that shows you the frequency and discrimination of each distractor, as well as the overall performance of your test.

These online tools can save you time and effort, as well as provide you with visual and numerical data that can help you interpret and compare your results. However, you should also be aware of the limitations and assumptions of these tools, and use them with caution and critical thinking.

3 Review your distractors

After collecting and analyzing data, you should review your distractors to determine if they need to be revised, replaced, or removed. If the distractors are too easy, too hard, or too similar to the correct answer, you should revise them to make them more plausible, specific, or relevant to the question stem. Alternatively, you can replace distractors that are irrelevant, misleading, or inappropriate with common misconceptions, alternative perspectives, or partial truths. Additionally, if the distractors are redundant, ineffective, or unnecessary you should remove them and reduce the number of options. Finally, consider the feedback that you want to provide to your learners and how your distractors can support their learning and retention.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?