Most any college student can press next or follow a step-by-step guide to get some computing technology to work.  But IT students need to troubleshoot problems, apply guides to their own specific environment, integrate technologies, apply security, optimize performance, and be able to quickly adapt to new or changing technologies.  They do this by possessing knowledge of the underpinnings of the computing technology.  As such, labs that I give students are more of a task list to complete rather than a step-by-step recipe.

IT students also need to learn to communicate about computing technologies within an organization and not have to do a Google search in the midst of talking to others (technical or non-technical) about these technologies.  Because of this, exam/quiz questions I give to students are not multiple-choice or true/false in nature.  Much to their chagrin, students are asked to describe some piece of computing technology, how it communicates with the network, how to secure it, and its implications for other services or devices.

Perhaps this is just my own tired bias against multiple-choice rearing its head.  As a student, I always thought multiple-choice questions fell into two categories; very easy or trick questions.  Knowing an exam was going to be multiple-choice resulted in a lack of studying on my part, assured that a decent grade was within my grasp just because of the exam format.  I tell my students that they will rarely get a multiple-choice question in the real world, and certainly not trick questions; instead they will need to be able to discuss and comprehend computing technologies.

With rising class sizes within my own department and no teaching assistants though, I worry about how long I will be able to sustain my favored assessments.  Can I determine if a student truly understands DNS (or any other type of computing technology) and be able to logically talk about it by using a more efficient grading mechanism?  Do I fail to see the strength of good multiple-choice questions?  What are your experiences?