Student-Teacher Driven Multiple-Choice System (STDMC), an alternative objective assessment tool

Abstract

High quality multiple-choice (MC) questions can make good objective assessment about student learning. Teachers also agree that good MC questions demonstrate good mastery of knowledge and skills of organizing the answers. Although students agree that tests using MC questions are fair, they may often have the impression of teachers like setting 'tricky' and difficult questions. A pilot study by the investigators revealed that students can set MC questions at the similar quality standard as teachers. The proposed "Student-Teacher Driven Multiple-Choice System" (STDMC) aims to set up a web-based interactive alternative assessment tool using multi-choice questions. To promote learning, the STDMC motivates student learning through their active involvement in preparing MC questions to demonstrate their understanding and applications of theories. For assessment, teachers can assess student leaning through grading on MC questions submitted and the test results. This explains the naming of the system as "student-teacher driven" and this is an innovative approach in using MC questions assessment. The STDMC is also a database system, which can build up high quality MC question bank for student learning, formative and summative assessment. The proposed STDMC is not course-specific and can be applied to courses for which MC questions are appropriate assessment tools. Thus, this project will also examine the effectiveness of the proposed new pedagogy in leaning assessment."