Operationalization of the Metadata Element "Difficulty"

Several learning object metadata (LOM) elements are of limited value, due to their semantic ambiguity. This study was carried out to operationalize the educational metadata element "difficulty" for multiple choice questions. For this purpose it considers both variables derived from the software used for composing and marking exams automatically, as well as didactic variables having an influence on the difficulty of multiple choice questions. The result is a classification scheme for multiple choice questions by difficulty. With the help of the findings an improvement can be achieved concerning the compilation of multiple choice exams and the quality standards set up can serve as guidelines for examiners when creating exams.