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Short Answer Questions (SAQs)


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Short answer questions (SAQs) tend to be open-ended questions (in contrast to MCQ) and are designed to elicit a direct response from students. 


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SAQs can be used to check knowledge and understanding, support engagement with academic literature or a particular case study and to encourage a progressive form of learning. 


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They can be used in both formative and summative assessment. 


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SAQs may take a range of different forms such as short descriptive or qualitative single sentence answers, diagrams or graphs with explanations, filling in missing words in a sentence or a list of answers. 


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Depending on the type of question, marking may simply involve checking against a list of correct answers. 


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Alternatively a set of criteria may be used based on:


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- factual knowledge about a topic: have the questions been answered correctly?


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- numerical answers: will marks be given on the process as well as the product answer?


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- writing style: importance of language, structure, accuracy of grammar and spelling?


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How to design good questions:


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- express the questions in clear language


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- ensure there is only one correct answer per question


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- state how the question should be answered


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- direct questions are better than the sentence completion


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- for numerical questions, be clear about marks for process as well as product and whether units are part of the answer


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Be prepared to accept other answers; some of which you may not have predicted.