The Medical Education Unit of MGIMS Sevagram organized an Advanced Workshop on MCQ Construction and Item Analysis on 24-25 February 2022. A total of 28 faculty members drawn from all departments of the institute participated in the hands-on workshop.
On Day 1 participants learnt about different formats of multiple choice questions (MCQs) and about the common flaws in construction of MCQs. They then began the tedious but necessary task of reviewing their own MCQs for their relevance, factual correctness, grammatical errors, and the plausibility of the options. This was followed by peer-review of these questions. Next, participants were introduced to the MOODLE-based learning management system used in the institute, called MGIMS Classroom. They were taught how to enter these questions in the online format and design online quizzes for students.
On Day 2, participants learnt how to construct scenario-based questions. The importance of framing higher-order questions which could test understanding, interpretation, analysis, clinical reasoning and decision-making skills was discussed. Further the need to convert basic science questions to applied formats, and to test all aspects of clinical understanding was taught. Participants created their own scenario-based questions and reviewed them. This was followed by hands-on sessions where processes of importing questions into MOODLE from other formats was discussed. The usefulness of developing question banks was discussed. The last session was on item analysis. Here participants learnt how to assess the difficulty level of the MCQs, the discrimination index of the MCQs, and the efficacy of distractors. This was followed by a hands-on session on performing item analysis manually as well as using MOODLE.
The workshop was awarded four credit points by the Maharashtra Medical Council. Dean, Dr Nitin Gangane, who inaugurated the workshop spoke about the importance of developing good assessment frameworks and developing departmental question banks. He applauded the Medical Education Unit for organizing workshops which were relevant and useful in the capacity building of the faculty. Dr Devesh Gosavi was the Workshop Coordinator, while Dr PN Murkey had been appointed as the observer by the MMC. The faculty of this workshop included Drs Anupama Gupta, Anshu, Subodh S Gupta, Abhishek Raut, Ashwini Kalantri, Sonia Jain, Pradeep Bokariya, Ruchi Kothari, Dilip Gupta, Devesh Gosavi and Pooja Batra.
The enthusiastic feedback from participants showed that they realized the importance of constructing high quality MCQs which tested higher order clinical reasoning. They felt empowered to embrace online technology, and learnt that it was possible to construct questions which were based on pictures, sounds and videos, with the added ease of automated marking.. One of the deliverables from all participants is the development of departmental question banks.