Effectiveness of longitudinal faculty development programs on MCQs items writing skills: A follow-up study

PLoS One. 2017 Oct 10;12(10):e0185895. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0185895. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

This study examines the long-term impact of the faculty development programs on the multiple choice question (MCQ) items' quality leading to study its effect on the students' overall competency level during their yearly academic assessment. A series of longitudinal highly constructed faculty development workshops were conducted to improve the quality of the MCQs items writing skills. A total of 2207 MCQs were constructed by 58 participants for the assessment of 882 students' cognitive competency level during the academic years 2012-2015. The MCQs were analyzed for the difficulty index (P-value), discriminating index (DI), presence/absence of item writing flaws (IWFs), and non-functioning distractors (NFDs), Bloom's taxonomy cognitive levels, test reliability, and the rate of students' scoring. Significant improvement in the difficulty index and DI were noticed during each successive academic year. Easy and poor discriminating questions, NFDs and IWFs were decreased significantly, whereas distractor efficiency (DE) mean score and high cognitive level (K2) questions were increased substantially during the each successive academic year. Improved MCQs' quality leaded to increased competency level of the borderline students. Overall, the longitudinal faculty development workshops help in improving the quality of the MCQs items writing skills of the faculty that leads to students' high competency levels.

MeSH terms

  • Choice Behavior
  • Education, Medical, Undergraduate / methods*
  • Educational Measurement
  • Faculty, Medical / education*
  • Humans
  • Program Development*
  • Quality Improvement / statistics & numerical data*
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Students
  • Writing*
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

The financial support for this study was provided by the COM, Research Centre, Deanship of Scientific Research, KSU, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.