The Quality of a PeerWise MCQ Repository

Purchase, H., Hamer, J., Denny, P. and Luxton-Reilly, A.

PeerWise allows students to create a repository of multiple choice questions which can be attempted by their peers, and discussed between them online. Peer-Wise has been shown to foster deep learning and to improve students’ performance. In this paper, we consider the nature of the repository created by a large, first year programming class, looking in particular at the quality attributes of Coverage, Question Quality, Difficulty and Indexing. The effect of student ability (as measured by a class test given before use of Peer-Wise) on the contributions to the repository is also investigated. We find that the overall quality of the repository is good, with only a few minor deficiencies, and conclude that these small defects are a small price to pay when compared with the substantial learning benefits that result from PeerWise use.

Cite as: Purchase, H., Hamer, J., Denny, P. and Luxton-Reilly, A. (2010). The Quality of a PeerWise MCQ Repository. In Proc. Twelfth Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE 2010) Brisbane, Australia. CRPIT, 103. Clear, T. and Hamer, J. Eds., ACS. 137-146

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