Student-Generated Quiz Questions: Design and Development of a Non-Disposable Assignment

Judy Orton Grissett, Georgia Southwestern State University

Feng-Ru Sheu, Kent State University

The present assignment—a multiple-choice question creation and review assignment inspired by renewable assignments and other active learning approaches—asks students to create questions for upcoming exams.

Introduction

Students are sometimes loath to complete class readings and assignments because they perceive no purpose beyond earning a grade. Lack of motivation can lead to poor quality work, low grades, and students’ lack of understanding of course material. One strategy to increase motivation and engagement is for students to create and review others’ novel multiple-choice exam questions that can be used on future exams. Inspired by renewable assignments, an active learning strategy that yields resources and materials for others, the online question-creation and review, or “QCR” assignment demonstrates to students the necessity of reading the text and the value placed in work.

Description of the Quiz Creation and Review (QCR) Assignment

This assignment provides students with an opportunity to create something purposeful and useful in the online or in-person classroom–the creation of multiple-choice questions and review of peers’ questions to be considered for use on future exams. The assignment’s design and development resulted from a collaboration between a faculty member and an instructional designer who have worked together for years on open pedagogy projects that allow students to engage with while finding purpose in an assignment.

Course description

The QCR assignment happened in spring 2019 in an in-person introductory-level human development psychology course. This course was a required course for students majoring in psychology and nursing and served as an elective for students in other majors. A total of 41 students were enrolled in the course. The class met in-person two times a week for 75 minutes each class period. The course format involved largely lectures with slide presentations and in-class small group activities and reflections.

Assignment description

The question-creation and review (QCR) assignment has two main stages. First, students create a set of multiple-choice questions (part 1) based on an assigned section of textbook readings from the open-source textbook Lifespan Development: A Psychological Perspective (2nd ed.) by Martha Lally and Suzanne Valentine-French (2017). Second, students conduct a blind-review of their peers’ questions through an online rubric including feedback for improvement (part 2). QCR assignments coincide with upcoming exams, so they serve as an exam review, too. A copy of the assignment and rubric can be found in the Appendix.

Part 1: Question creation

Students create a set of three multiple-choice questions based on a section of the assigned reading from their textbook (Lally & Valentine-French 2017). Students submit their questions via the online survey tool, Google Forms, using a link provided within the learning management system. By using an online survey platform, the process for submitting questions is streamlined—students enter the last four digits of their student ID (for tracking) followed by the questions they create, first entering the question stem (i.e., the question itself) followed by the list of possible response options for each question. Students are not required to mark the correct response option in their submission. The instructor also provides and reviews student guidelines to create effective multiple-choice questions and provides several examples online. Students practice by creating questions in small groups and then exchanging the questions with another small group to get feedback, including whether the question should be used on the exam. Through in-class instructions, guidance, and practice, and reviewing the online guidelines, students become familiar with the process of creating multiple-choice questions. Once all the questions are submitted, each question is labeled with a code, which is recorded in an Excel spreadsheet. Part 1 was worth 5 points out of a total of 600 possible course points.

Part 2: Question review

Next, students are provided with one set of questions written by one of their classmates to review using an online rubric (see Appendix), which allows for a double-anonymous review, again using the Qualtrics survey platform. Students rate the set of questions on a 5-point scale (Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree) on the following qualities: relevance, clarity, level of difficulty, appropriateness of answer choices, and whether they recommend the question to be used on an upcoming exam. Part 2 was worth 5 points out of a total of 600 possible course points.

Overview

Instructors planning to implement the QCR assignment should provide students with the following (in order):

1. Homework assignment instructions
2. Guidelines for creating multiple-choice quiz questions, as well as examples
3. A link to an online form for submitting their quiz questions (Part 1 of the assignment)
4. An online review rubric where students can submit their reviews of another student’s work (Part 2 of the assignment)

These items, along with a grading rubric used by the instructor, are provided in the Appendix.

Working with the Tools You Have

Although Google Forms and Qualtrics were used, respectively, for the question submission and question review stages of the assignment, depending on the instructor’s preference, familiarity, and comfort-level using other forms of software, any survey software or even the learning management system’s survey tool (if available) could be used to execute the QCR assignment and still achieve the same outcomes, including reviewer anonymity. We should note that in a previous iteration of the QCR assignment in a previous semester, students submitted their questions as Word documents within discussion threads in the course learning management system. Through this approach, neither the questions nor the reviews were anonymous. Further, students could not complete their reviews until their group members had submitted their questions, which were often last-minute, late, or not at all, which delayed the review process. For these reasons, we highly recommend using a survey response tool, which are sometimes built within learning management systems (e.g., D2L) or are found at no cost online (e.g., Google Forms) for both question submission and review if possible.

Potential Assignment Variations

In the current case, the QCR assignment was implemented in an in-person course, but it can be easily adapted to an online course, where it can engage students beyond the traditional paper or project assignment. In the current implementation, students were provided with instructions on how to create multiple-choice questions and how to use the rubric to review a peer’s questions. In an online class, an instructor may create a brief instructional video or a written description outlining instructions to online students and link directly to examples of multiple-choice questions, the submission portal, and the review rubric.

Further, instructors may choose for the assignment to be a group project or individual assignment. In our case, we made it an individual assignment, and each part of the assignment was submitted via an online form. The form ensured that we could collect them electronically and organize them in a way that made distribution easy and that allowed for a quick, formative evaluation.

Our Next Steps

In future implementations in in-person and online courses, instructors may consider replacing formal paper quizzes with in-class or online games involving multiple-choice questions that students create. This activity can engage students in a fun activity while practicing retrieval and minimizing the stress paper quizzes can cause.

On the technical side, if time and resources allow, instructors may find a simple app or program that allows an even more streamlined process and that includes additional features for students to create questions, such as the ability for students to view others’ questions. In terms of pedagogy and instructional strategies, instructors can recap student work in class (or a video in an online class) and show more examples of multiple-choice questions that test higher level knowledge.

Reflection

The question creation and review (QCR) assignment provided students the opportunity to review course content in a different modality than the traditional paper assignment. From the instructor’s perspective, it was refreshing to try something new, particularly in a survey course that draws students from different backgrounds who may not have much, if any, prior coursework in the area and may lack interest in the course material.

From the instructional designer’s perspective, the assignment went well, including the technical part, which took less time to implement over time, as we got better with the assignment format, design, and grading procedure. At first it took some time to set up the rubric, but once established, it is easy to implement and can be used in the classroom with little effort. Ideally, an instructor or instructional designer could repeat this across multiple courses at different levels, so efficiency is key.

The design of the assignments allows students to be exposed to the text and content multiple times in different formats, helping students actively exercise retrieval practice rather than passively studying (e.g., try to memorize by repeatedly reading it). Although the logistics of design and implementation are important, we believe students were motivated to contribute something to a larger purpose (contributing to the test bank), which is a cornerstone of renewable assignments and key to student engagement.

We recommend using the QCR assignment in classes (online or in-person) where students engage in textbook readings and take exams that include multiple-choice questions. We caution against comparing the QCR assignment with traditional assignments, such as papers or group projects. Each has its own purpose and place in the pedagogical toolbox. If it is designed right, paper assignments allow students to understand, reflect on, and apply course content. Paper assignments also give students the opportunity to build written communication, critical thinking, and inquiry skills. The QCR assignment is not intended to replace but simply serve as an alternative or complement to the paper assignment, as they each build different sets of skills and engage students in different ways.

Although we did not directly assess student learning as an outcome of this assignment, we gave students the opportunity to learn by exposing them to the material in various forms, which can help learning. We did, however, collect student feedback regarding the QCR assignment after each assignment and at the end of the course. Their feedback revealed that they enjoyed the assignment and appreciated the variety and flexibility to choose between it and the paper assignment.

Appendix

Renewable Assignment—Human Growth and Development: Question Creation and Review Assignment

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