Creating Quarterly Curricular Examinations Using Test Bank Retired Questions
Purpose:
Assessment of student acquisition and retention of curriculum content is essential. The effectiveness of the pedagogy of a Physical Therapy program can be ascertained by curricular examinations. While the Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy offers a Practice Exam and Assessment Tool (PEAT) for students to take prior to the Board examination, intra curricular examinations must be created by the Physical Therapy Programs themselves. A mid-curricular examination is created to assess students’ level of knowledge by requesting items from each of the faculty leads of the courses in the curriculum to that point. However, consideration of the need to assess students in a more frequent and cumulative manner can be achieved by using retired questions from course test banks in those classes. This would allow for an ever-evolving curricular examinations at the quarterly, midterm and final that are cumulative in nature.
Description:
The 2019 Combined Sections Meeting “Development and implementation of a novel test bank for a course utilizing Blackboard over multiple campuses of a University” described the methodology of creating test banks for each of the courses in a curriculum across a multi-campus University. As the test banks grow through expansion each semester across the multi-campus University, questions will be retired as occurs in development of the PEAT. These retired questions are utilized in the development and expansion of Quarterly Cumulative Curricular Examinations (QCCE “Q-CEE”). The Examinations are delivered in a Blackboard Environment with randomization of questions and Answers to help maintain the integrity and uniqueness of the exams. The examinations each quarter will increase in content as well as item number until a similar examination size and timing to the PEAT occurs.
Summary of Use:
The quarterly curricular examinations serve several purposes: 1) Allows instant feedback to the students as to their level of readiness and retention of the material learned prior in the curriculum 2) Advancing quarterly cumulative examinations reiterate material from prior quarters keeping the material “fresh” in the minds of the students 3) Identifies courses with potential content delivery deficits with poorly performing students and 4) Prepares the student for the Board Examination.
Importance to Members:
The benefits of the (QCCE) are of benefit to both the student and the University. Students feel a connectivity to the content throughout the Physical Therapy program. Often professors express concerns that students retain material for the purposes of examinations in each course but demonstrate limited carryover. Content threading throughout the curriculum and delivery of the QCCE provides additional tools for student success.