NBME has a great resource, and online tutorial that addresses many of these things too – especially in creating higher order, problem solving questions rather than just factual recall.
This is their manual: http://www.nbme.org/publications/item-writing-manual.html
This is their tutorial: http://download.usmle.org/IWTutorial/intro.htm
They have years of experience writing (and assessing) high quality single best answer questions.
However, given some recent discussions on the listserv and here about writing questions – there has been a growing debate on if the RAP questions SHOULD be written so well. The better and more clear the question, the less appeals (at least about the syntax of the question) but perhaps also less discussion among the teams– as it is clear. Unless in your response options, it is easy to craft plausible options that have common errors in thinking – that permit additional learning in the teams as they come to the single best right answer.
So which is more important:
· Having clear, well crafted, good item statistics, unambiguous RAT questions that ensures the students understand the core principles and spend the time on the application? OR
· Having less well crafted questions, with possibly even more than one right answer, to engender rich debate and discussion during RAT, and more appeals (to create more thinking)? (as well as excellent application questions)?
I personally am torn. Having been frustrated by vague questions but enriched by the team discussion – I see the value there. But sometimes, time is of the essence – I would rather spend the bulk of the time on a rich application that gets at those issues too.
Sandy
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Sandy COOK, PhD | Senior Associate Dean, |Medical Education, Research, and Evaluation (MERE) Department|
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From: Team-Based Learning [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Neil Haave
Sent: Tuesday, October 7, 2014 1:19 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Jim's great post on Faculty Focus
See Jim Sibley's great post today on Faculty Focus about producing MCQs.
Cheers
Neil
--
Neil Haave, PhD
Associate Professor, Biology
Managing Editor, CELT
Augustana Faculty
University of Alberta
Camrose, AB T4V 2R3
Canada
http://www.augustana.ualberta.ca/profs/nhaave/DISCLAIMER: Any and all spelling mistakes contained in this email were inserted at the whim of my iPhone.
Important: This email is confidential and may be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete it and notify us immediately; you should not copy or use it for any purpose, nor disclose its contents to any other person. Thank you.