Quality of written exams: peer feedback meeting

Course schedule

Dates Start time End time Location Coordinator registrations
app/max
   
Online self-study start 9 March - Online Meeting 23 April 2020 13:00 17:00 Online Soeting, Jolanda 3 / 12 Registration ended at 09/03/2020

Course description

In this meeting we will discuss the key elements in ensuring exam quality. When you register for the meeting, you will receive the assignment details. Completion of the assignments about the ‘quality of written exams’ (Part IIa) is a pre-requisite for joining this meeting to get (peer) feedback. In this way, you can make further improvements and include these in your UTQ portfolio. 

Since the quality of your written exam is based on the assessment quality of your entire course (assignment Part I: the assessment strategy of your course) we will also reflect on this.

Target group & Prerequisites

This meeting is designed for lecturers with (some) experience in designing written exams.

The content should tie in with the teaching duties of teachers at Wageningen University:

  • Participants should have experience in administering written exams.
  • Participants should be responsible for designing (part of) the written exam of at least one course for which an exam or draft exam already exists.
  • Participants should have attended the course (Re)designing a course and/or should be able to construct an assessment matrix which shows congruence between intended learning outcomes, assessment methods and test elements, plus the weighting of each sub-part and/or evaluate and if necessary improve the quality of an existing assessment matrix.
  • An up-to-date Assessment Strategy must be available for the course you will be working on.

Learning outcomes

After completing the assignment and attending the meeting the participant is able to:

  • construct a specification grid for the exam of his or her own course, which links the learning outcomes and test items
  • formulate items appropriate to the required level of knowledge
  • formulate closed questions and accompanying answer options using the checklist ‘quality of multiple-choice questions’
  • apply question formulation criteria to the drafting of open-ended questions
  • draw up a model answer  to assess open-ended questions and uses it in the assessment

Content

The content covers:

  1. Formulating your own open-ended questions using the question formulation criteria
  2. Formulating your own closed questions using the question formulation criteria
  3. Drawing up and using a model answer for open-ended questions
  4. Specification grid: the relationship between exam questions and learning outcomes
  5. Setting the cut-off point for your exam
  6. Using psychometric analysis to improve your exam

Method

This activity is set up as self-study followed by a feedback meeting. First, you will go through the theories in your own time and make the assignments (6-8 hours). You need to complete the assignment as a preparation for the feedback meeting.

During the peer feedback meeting we will discuss the key elements in ensuring the quality of written exams, so you can make further improvements and include this in your UTQ portfolio.

Note: if you want more guidance and feedback while working on this assignment as well as more in-depth background information, you can register for the course ‘Designing exams’.

Literature

After registration you will receive the self-study material.

Certificate

Your completed assignment will be registered. You will not receive a certificate.

Costs

Participation is free for Wageningen University & Research staff involved in teaching WU courses.

Cancellation

We consider registration as final. When cancelled within three weeks before the activity starts, your chair group will be charged all costs of your subscription (€350,-).

If there are less than 6 participants in the course, Education Support Centre may cancel the course and notify you at the latest 2 weeks before the start of the course.