1.1 Multiple-choice testing in higher education

This is the first video of the SPOC on "How to write items for measuring Student Progress" introduces the course and its objectives.

The video explains, how multiple-choice tests are an integral part of many academic health educations, and how they can be used for both formative and summative assessment purposes. Various examples of formative and summative use of multiple-choice testing, such as small classroom quizzes, post-lecture testing, course-based assessment, program-level assessment, and progress testing are discussed. The video explains how progress testing is a longitudinal way of measuring the growth of students' functional knowledge within a domain without distorting the learning process, and how it positively affects students' learning behavior. The video highlights that progress testing is specifically designed to target the cognitive domains of the curriculum, thus does not cover final practical or soft skill learning goals.

The video also mentions the VetRepos Collaboration, which aims to create a joint repository of multiple-choice questions to be used for progress testing in European veterinary schools and has taken initiative to the production of the SPOC.

 

The next video lesson in the SPOC will explain basic concepts of progress testing in more detail and the necessary steps to be taken when creating a common test item repository. 

 

COBL_litterature_40x40px_2017_18.png  Further reading

  • Van der Vleuten, C., Freeman, A., & Collares, C. F. (2018). Progress test utopia. Perspectives on Medical Education, 7(2), 136–138. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-018-0413-1 Links to an external site.
  • Favier, R. P., van der Vleuten, C. P. M., & Ramaekers, S. P. J. (2017). Applicability of progress testing in veterinary medical education. Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, 44(2), 351–357. https://doi.org/10.3138/jvme.0116-008R