Adopt, adapt and improve

At this morning's Improving Assessment and Feedback symposium, the excellent presentation by Tim Vincent and Inam Haq on their massive project at BSMS to create an online question bank for  final year medical students reminded me (in a good way) of the ancient Monty Python Lingerie Robbery interpretation of the Round Table's motto.  Students were found to be using the quizzes not as an extra learning facility for their development during clinical practice, as intended, but as a last minute revision tool. The team are currently looking at ways of making the materials even more useful for students to use in the way they prefer, based on their feedback and usage logs.The message the team took from the experience seems a sensible one: if students don't do what you expect, look carefully at what they actually do and support it.

Here's the official summary of their talk: 

Tim Vincent & Inam Haq (Brighton & Sussex Medical School)

Online quizzes as a learning tool: What we didn’t expect the students to do

The Medical School have developed a bank of 600 quizzes, in the format of clinical case scenarios, using the test tool in studentcentral. Its purpose was to support final year students while on long-term clinical placements as a formative assessment learning tool and the students were given a suggested weekly minimum number (not mandatory). This session will explore how the students really used it and use that as a springboard for discussions of the implications for designing and implementing formative assessment activities.