What’s the evidence telling us about effective questions for learning? How can we apply it? 

In this week's episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Gemma is joined by fellow Custom team members Ross Garner, Sam and Alison to discuss key takeaways from Patti Shanks’ book, Write better multiple-choice questions to assess learning.  

We discussed:  

• The role of questions in learning  
• What makes an effective question 
• How to overcome challenges in writing them. 

We talked about how we used open questions as part of a project with Scottish Enterprise. Find out more about the project here: Award-winning blended learning for Scottish Enterprise case study. 

In WILTW, Ross excitedly told us about the five attempts (and injuries!) that Bond’s stuntman took to nail the crocodile shot in Live and Let Die. You can watch them on Twitter: twitter.com/michaelwarbur17  

Gemma’s discovery about the Summer Time Act came from an episode of the BBC’s podcast You’re Dead to Me called ‘The History of Timekeeping’. 

Further details came from the BBC article, “The Builder who changed how the world keeps time”. 

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.   

Connect with our speakers   

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter: 

• Ross Garner - @RossGarnerMT  
• Sam Brown - @SbrownMT  
• Alison Perrott - @allyperrott 
• Gemma Towersey – @gemmatowersey