More than a Lucky Guess? – Confidence-Based Multiple-Choice Questions for Worried Law Students

It is well-known that the learning context can greatly influence students’ motivation and engagement with a subject matter. If students approach a new class with low confidence and worry that a subject matter is inherently unintelligible, what’s the point of investing time in attending lectures, revising notes or studying with a textbook? Vice versa, if students believe that they can significantly influence their grade at the exam with the right type and amount of investment, they are more likely to engage in goal-oriented learning. Teaching European Union Law to a large group of undergraduate students, I was interested in a teaching intervention that would give students an opportunity to obtain feedback both on their learning as well as on their self-assessment skills while at the same time building their confidence and easing their worries towards a new and seemingly unpopular subject matter. I decided to use confidence-based multiple-choice tests in my compulsory 2nd year module at a British university. Confidence-based MCQ quizzes or tests not only ask students to provide the correct answer(s) but also asks them to rate their own answers according to how confident they feel about their responses. The chapter provides an overview and evaluation of my largely positive experience and reflects on the further use of confidence-based multiple-choice tests and its limitations.