Effectiveness of longitudinal faculty development programs on MCQs items writing skills: A follow-up study

Abstract

This study examines the long-term impact of the faculty development programs on the multiple choice question (MCQ) items’ quality leading to study its effect on the students’ overall competency level during their yearly academic assessment. A series of longitudinal highly constructed faculty development workshops were conducted to improve the quality of the MCQs items writing skills. A total of 2207 MCQs were constructed by 58 participants for the assessment of 882 students’ cognitive competency level during the academic years 2012–2015. The MCQs were analyzed for the difficulty index (P-value), discriminating index (DI), presence/absence of item writing flaws (IWFs), and non-functioning distractors (NFDs), Bloom’s taxonomy cognitive levels, test reliability, and the rate of students’ scoring. Significant improvement in the difficulty index and DI were noticed during each successive academic year. Easy and poor discriminating questions, NFDs and IWFs were decreased significantly, whereas distractor efficiency (DE) mean score and high cognitive level (K2) questions were increased substantially during the each successive academic year. Improved MCQs’ quality leaded to increased competency level of the borderline students. Overall, the longitudinal faculty development workshops help in improving the quality of the MCQs items writing skills of the faculty that leads to students’ high competency levels.

Motivating assessment item writers in medical programs: A qualitative study

“…and not based at the university with training workshops and suggests a range of theoretically informed practical strategies (see Table 2). However, there is significant evidence that faculty development programs do improve item quality in medical school examinations [2,[29][30][31][32][33]. Moreover, studies adopting an SDT analysis such as Lyness et al have previously highlighted the importance of supporting the development of skills necessary to meet the tasks given to medical academics [18].…”

Development of multiple choice questions' instructional plan for the nursing educators

“…But, unlike to such result, Baig et al, in 2014 found that there is necessitate for revising the quality of the MCQs test content by the program team because it is frequently not credible. [41,42] Parallel to this study finding, recently, in a research study in Egypt by Nassar in 2017 who reported that the high-quality MCQs is needed for undergraduate student's assessment in healthcare sciences. MCQs tests should be assessed and adjusting of any pitfalls or flaws.…”

Rating Scale Measures in Multiple-Choice Exams: Pilot Studies in Pharmacology

“…We suggest that MC questions with a random number of right answers increase the power of the MC to assess the knowledge of students and might also offer the chance to improve their problem-solving skills and in other words make it possible to reach higher levels in Bloom's taxonomy, indeed at least in the US biology teaching to undergraduates even higher Bloom levels of knowledge were measurable with MCQ [24]. Others complained that at least in tests being given to first-and second-year medical students, only low competence levels were used and called for improving the MCQ by offering faculty programs on MCQ writing skills [25,26].…”