Answering questions in a co‐created formative exam question bank improves summative exam performance, while students perceive benefits from answering, authoring, and peer discussion: A mixed methods analysis of PeerWise

Abstract

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PeerWise: Students creating questions for their peers

“…PeerWise is used in many different disciplines, including Computer Science, Psychology and Physics. Benefits include better exam performance, as reported in the study within Medicine by Guilding et al (2021). Fergus et al (2021) saw high student engagement in both formative and summative Chemistry assessment.…”

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PeerWise (https://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/) is a system which allows students to create multiplechoice questions for other students, answer questions posed by their peers and then provide feedback (Denny et al, 2008). There is evidence in the literature to show this method of assessment has a positive impact (e.g., Guilding et al 2021;Fergus et al 2021;Feeley and Parris 2012), particularly on students' attainment and engagement. In a funded project, we introduced PeerWise into the assessment for a module at Sheffield Hallam University (U.K.) and another at La Trobe University (Australia).

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The benefits of team working with exam preparation

“…Sitting a peer-produced paper and then explaining the answers promotes better team-working, reinforces learning and acts as a predictor of exam performance (Adesope et al., 2017). Authoring and answering questions may encourage candidates to get in the exam frame of mind and to think more like an examiner (Guilding et al., 2021).…”

“…One of the challenges of compiling a peer-written paper is the quality and relevance of questions. Common pitfalls include not keeping to the curriculum, focussing on minutia and setting questions that tested factual recall rather than an applied knowledge or were not at the appropriate level of difficulty (Guilding et al ., 2021). Other challenges include how questions are phrased, for example, use of negative words (e.g.…”

El profesorado, eje fundamental de la transformación de la docencia universitaria

“…Por último, siguiendo a otros autores (Guilding et al, 2021;Howe et al, 2018;Nso-Roca et al, 2020), la aplicación de PeerWise puede suponer una forma interesante de fomentar entre el estudiantado de enseñanza superior su autonomía en el estudio, pero también el trabajo colaborativo. Además, como se ha corroborado en el presente estudio, la aplicación de PeerWise puede destacar por tener ventajas como permitir la generación de un considerable banco de preguntas de una forma costoeficiente y que puede tener un impacto positivo en el rendimiento académico de quienes participan de su elaboración y respuesta.…”