Web-based Assessment for Studentsʼ Testing and Self-monitoring

Objective: The objective of this project is to develop a suite of Web-based applications assessing medical students in the basic and clinical sciences. Using the power of Web-database interactivity, these tools have multifarious outcomes, including administration of Web-based exams, self-testing applications to promote metacognition, and as diagnostic instruments to alert faculty about misconceptions in student cognition. Description: As the Web becomes pivotal in delivering curriculum in medical education, the nature of Web-based applications to enable this integration has also diversified. One such domain is testing and assessment on the Web, which is relatively unexplored to date. Over the last two years the Instructional Design and Technology unit (IDTU) at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, has developed a suite of database-driven assessment tools based on extensive formative evaluation with faculty and students. The first category of these tools consists of self-assessed practice exams, which allow individual students to select categories of questions for self-testing, with immediate feedback offered on completion. Students are able to track their responses over large or small time intervals. All these characteristics have served to convert a passive practice exam into a cognitively meaningful teaching tool emphasizing metacognition. A second category of assessment tools is related to formal assessment, namely all types of exams. To date, IDTU has developed and administered Web-based exams in four courses in the basic and clinical sciences. (The “exam shell” has also been shared with other medical schools to generate a pathology exam.) All exams are tailored to accommodate the specific testing requirements of each course, resulting in varying levels of interactivity and embedded features. To illustrate, an exam may be entirely open-ended (giving students the freedom to access all items nonlinearly) or may have an imposed structure (emulating problem-based learning, for example). The interface emulates features of paper-based testing as well as novel characteristics possible with Web technology, such as the ability to enlarge slides, the ability to mark and retrieve questions for a revisit, and a notes field that allows the student to elaborate on responses. A third category of assessment tools is related to diagnosing students' problems via practice assessment. This tool is under construction. The proposed enhancements will provide instructors with instant item analysis of the practice exam and with individual and groups statistics on students' performances. After the faculty are taught to use the tool, we hypothesize that instructors will be able to successfully identify and advise students who perform below par, as well as fine-tune their own instructional activities to address group misconceptions. Discussion: The summative evaluation of Web-based exams has shown consistently positive trends. We intend to incorporate several automated grading, feedback, and editing features into the final version. To promote greater use of these tools, faculty training is needed, along with continuous enhancements based on formative and summative evaluation. We are dedicated to both these activities to ensure successful integration of these cognitively powerful applications into the curriculum.