Writing outstanding MCQs that match your objectives: Why keep assessing your student's performance a secret?

Abstract

Assessing student performance begins with first understanding what you expect from the student and then the development of effective tools or strategies to measure your expectations. Most faculty have a good intuitive sense of what they are teaching and how well students are learning, but they do not always take the needed steps to translate that into effective descriptors to guide students' learning, guide their assessments of students' performance, and to provide easy replication of their learning activities. The later task is critical in providing a scholarly approach to the art of teaching. The purpose of this article is to provide faculty with some tools to help clarify what they expect from a learning situation, develop effective tools to measure the impact of that situation, and consider viewing their teaching efforts from a scholarly perspective.