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Abstract Category: Methods

Poster ID: M1

DON’T STOP TEACHING – EVEN DURING EXAMS!  

Jacqueline Carnegie, Ph.D.*, Department of Cellular & Molecular Medicine, University of Ottawa , Ottawa , ON , CANADA , K1H 8M5.

Supplementary web sites are used increasingly to support Faculty of Medicine and Health Science undergraduate programs in an effort to provide students enrolled in these large classes with individually-oriented opportunities to interact with course content and improve learning.  A favorite of students are self-assessment web tools that provide feedback on their progress in learning and comprehension.  Described here is the use of such web-based self-testing tools, not only to provide each student with feedback pertaining to his/her learning, but also as important teaching tools that continue to instruct, outside the classroom, and to correct content-specific misconceptions. 

WebCT software includes two formative evaluation tools: a quiz tool that provides students with an overall score once all questions have been completed, and a self-testing tool that provides immediate feedback as the student works through each question in the exercise. It is the latter tool, the self-testing tool, that is of particular instructive value.  While allowing the instructor to develop course-specific practice questions, the self-testing tool also permits feedback to be provided (pop-up box) for each choice selected by the student.  Hence, not only can the instructor reinforce valid concepts upon selection of the right answer, but, more importantly, he/she can also provide written commentary for each incorrect answer, pointing out why that choice is not correct, and, via a sentence or two of instructive material and/or reference to a textbook figure, address possible misconceptions that may have led the student to initially choose such an answer.  Students continue to work with each question, reading appropriate feedback, until they arrive at the correct answer.  A final advantage of this tool is that this additional instruction is delivered at a most opportune time.  Students do self-testing exercises when preparing for exams.  Concerned about impending summative evaluation, it is at this point in their studies that they are most receptive to further instruction/clarification.  Indeed, students at several levels of undergraduate training found these self-testing exercises with their accompanying feedback to be very helpful.

 A similar approach can be used after the summative examination, again to correct misconceptions and to provide a final opportunity to teach outside the classroom.  Instead of simply being finished with an area of study after an exam has been written, students can be assigned those multiple choice questions with which they had particular difficulty and, with the added incentive of bonus marks, be given the opportunity to improve their understanding through the construction of their own feedback statements that explain why the correct answer is indeed the right one and why the answer they initially chose when writing the exam is actually not correct.

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