Strategy for Multiple Choice Examination

My colleagues and I had a running discussion on how to set multiple choice questions, and how students handle them. We had speculated on the expected result of ignoring the actual questions in a multiple-choice examination and selecting the same answer for all of the questions - e.g, selecting “a” for all questions without even reading the questions themselves. The expected result was about 20%, if there are 5 choices and wrong answers are not penalized.

Last semester was the first time that I have actually seen one of my students adopting such a strategy, and the result was not pretty - more or less what we expected. And then this semester, a second one. The result is again not pretty.

I hope this does not become a trend - it will be really sad.