Now check you questions.

Chances are good that your factual question exhibits many, or most, of the following characteristics. Your factual question:

• is specific
• has a right answer. (Probably one right answer.)
• is easily graded.
• requires recall or recognition skills

Sample factual questions are:

Name the body of water located between America and Europe. What continent lies south of the United States? What mountain range is part of the border between India and Siberia?

Equally likely is the chance that your conceptual question exhibits many, or most, of the following characteristics. Your conceptual question:

• is more open-ended.
• has the potential for more than one answer to adequately explain the phenomenon
• is more difficult to grade than your factual question.
• requires students to demonstrate skills of comparison, analysis or synthesis.
  

Sample conceptual questions are:

Explain the process that moved South America away from Africa. What changes to this map would result from melting of the polar ice caps?