Student-Written Multiple-Choice Questions—a Practical and Educational Approach

Abstract

The purpose of our student-led project was to fulfill junior medical students’ demand for instructive, curriculum-specific practice questions while providing a learning experience and teaching opportunity for participating senior students. Eleven second-year students were taught how to write high-quality multiple-choice questions through an interactive workshop. Subsequently, they were instructed to write questions with detailed explanations for their assigned lecture topics. Thirty-four student-written and faculty-reviewed questions were combined with 16 purely faculty-written questions to create a 50-question exam. No significant difference was found in question difficulty between the student-written (79.5%) and faculty-written (84.0%) questions (p = 0.37). The discrimination index and point biserial correlation were higher for student-written (0.29, 0.32) vs. faculty-written (0.17, 0.25) questions (p < .01, < .05). The test-takers learned key course topics, while the test-writers reviewed key first-year objectives and refined their test-taking strategies. The project provided a model for feasibly developing comprehensive, high-quality, and curriculum-specific questions.