Teaching Staff Development Unit at the College of Pharmacy organized a lecture on the approved ways of writing the multiple-choice questions (MCQs), based on the criteria of the Saudi Pharmacist Licensure Examination “SPLE”. The lecture was given by Dr. Majed Ali, the faculty member in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy on Thursday, September 20, 2018.

At the beginning of the lecture, Dr. Majed mentioned all the scientific references in the fields of Pharmaceutical Sciences which the SPLE questions will include. He then gave a detailed explanation for the rules of writing MCQs, where the question shall include a well-defined problem, so that the student can understand what is intended from the problem without the need for alternatives to clarify it.

Moreover, he stressed on the importance of phrasing the question accurately, so that the student would not need to guess what the question author means. So, the question shall include all the information required for the answer.

He added that it is important to avoid the negative formulation as possible and there should be a linguistically suitable alternative for the original question. He highlighted that it is important not to make the right answer always longer than the wrong alternatives. Also, relations between the original question and the right answer shall be avoided.

He then explained how to formulate questions without using “all of the above”, as it makes the question very easy.

At the end of the lecture, Dr. Majed answered all the questions and inquires of the faculty members from different departments about the different ways for formulation multiple choice questions as per the criteria of the Saudi Pharmacist Licensure Examination “SPLE”.