I feel that helped the students with higher level thinking and challenged them to explain and understand the concept. I think open-ended questions are a good assessment strategy.
Mulitple choice is nothing more than being able to guess correctly.
It requires no depth of knowledge and hurts thoes with specifice learning disabilities. I would urge teacher to asses using essays, short-answer, and portfioios instead of multile choice. Sure it takes a little longer to grade, but it gives you a much better idea of what your students know. Multiple choice test require very little cognitive ability, compared to the alternatives. Teaching students to think for themselves is not done by having students regurgitate information in a mulitple choice setting.