True or False?

True or False: We live in a post-truth world.

 

As true-false questions go, this is not well-constructed because it is a subjective statement, not an objective one. True-false constructs are developed to assess the factual accuracy of a statement, and “We live in a post-truth world,” inhabits the domain of political theory, philosophy, and social science to name a few, and these don’t regularly offer objective fact as an end-product (and I’m okay with that). But this particular true-false proposition does make me think, which, as an educator, is what it’s all about for the students in Brimmer’s classrooms.

 

I am thinking about true-false statements because I foisted a modified true-false activity (if it’s false, make it true) on my IR class as a reading check for an article on a modern day application of The Melian Dialogue (Thucydides, 400 BCE). This was reading comprehension at two levels: first, of the article, and second, of the true-false statements. This was ungraded, included a word bank (that’s me sneaking in some extra work on IR terms), and open text.

 

For the ‘less-prepared student,’ the best quality of a true-false assessment question for any person tackling it—someone who has no knowledge of the subject, that is—is that there’s a 50-50 chance of getting the correct answer. Those are pretty good odds. And the statistical probability that a student who is purely guessing scores 5 out of 5 on a true-false quiz is slightly over 3%. (True or False: The saying, “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics,” is attributed to Mark Twain.)

 

However, here is a twist: if the true-false assessment has 10 statements, the quiz overall may not be 50-50, meaning there may not be 5 True statements and 5 False statements among its components. Hmmm. Yet compare that with a multiple choice question which gives one a 25% chance of choosing correctly from a-d, or 20% if one is up against an AP exam multiple choice question! In both cases the odds are not as good as in the true-false scenario. And both matching and Fill-in-the-Blank (word bank version) with multiple items decreases chances even more. (That was my first vocabulary term quiz: 12 matching items, 5 fill in the blanks, and, yes, 5 true-false statements to sort out! True or False: The students in my IR class were excited to take this quiz.)

 

But a badly written true-false question can shift the odds as can a tormenting teacher’s temerity to type up a tortuous “Modified True-False Quiz,’’ which incorporates the task of correcting the false statements with words or phrasing that would make them true. So long, 50-50 chance; hello improved learning opportunity!

 

Back in 2021 a group of social scientists conducted a study of the validity of true-false testing in education and stated, “…our results suggest that true–false tests can be employed as a learning tool” (Oyku Uner, Eylul Tekin, and Henry L. Roediger III, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Vol. 28, No. 1, 114–129, 2021).

 

So you’re telling me there’s value to administering a true-false assessment?

 

Yes. Having been educated in the area of the assessment and in thinking routines increases the otherwise 50-50 or worse numerical odds for all of the aforementioned question types. Bringing even partial knowledge to the task tilts the true-false assessment odds in the test-takers favor. It’s not about coin flip luck anymore. In addition to a modicum of knowledge, other forces that can disrupt/improve the odds include logical reasoning, heuristics (cognitive rules for problem solving), inferential and evaluative thinking, and contextual predictions. That’s no “Just the facts, ma’am” knowledge retrieval, but some true true-false reasoning and discernment. This kind of applied thinking can easily post up our post-truth true-false proposition like an in-his-prime Kevin McHale on…well, anyone. (True or False: At Brimmer, we seek to help our students develop and use critical thinking skills.) 

 

True or False: You stuck it out to the end of this piece of writing. (Oops, I broke the 50-50 rule here…)