Building Multiple-Choice Questions Using Cognitive Models – An Innovative Approach to Expanding Your Exam Content (clerkship and pre-clerkship)
Date/Time: Thursday, June 16, 2022 | 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Location: Virtual - link to be provided later
Facilitator: Dr. Isabelle Desjardins
Target Audience: UGME clerkship and pre-clerkship Faculty members - FoM
Prerequisite: We strongly recommend that participants complete the MCQ writing learning module offered by the Medical Council of Canada and McMaster University Continuing Health Sciences Program (https://machealth.ca/programs/mcq_and_cdm_prep/) before attending this workshop. The learning module takes approximately one hour and will introduce the learner to concepts around producing high quality questions. The MCC and McMaster workshop is an accredited activity.
The goal of this workshop is to provide a framework for the development of high-quality MCQs using cognitive models. This virtual workshop will be a practical session in which participants affiliated with UGME exams will have a short didactic presentation on the development of MCQs and the use of cognitive models and then will develop their own cognitive models, as facilitated by the presenter.
They will then use these models to build MCQs.
Description: Whether at the pre-clerkship or clerkship levels, exam content developers are consistently striving to expand their exam content to ensure that exam questions are medically accurate, up-to-date, and frequently renewed. However, exam content development can be a very resource-intensive endeavour. A creative solution to this problem has been the use of cognitive models (i.e., representations of the knowledge and skills that are required to solve a problem) to improve the efficiency of multiple-choice question (MCQ) development. Item writers will be asked to use the cognitive model approach to deconstruct their reasoning process to develop a cognitive model that will be used to create multiple MCQs. This approach has many advantages: it is efficient and leads to high-quality items by ensuring that MCQs assess the application of knowledge rather than factual recall.
Objectives:
After this session, participants will be able to:
- 1. Describe the basic principles of effective MCQ development
- 2. Describe the process of developing a cognitive model
- 3. Develop a cognitive model
- 4. Use their model to build MCQs
REQUEST: Your contribution of 3 MCQs would be appreciated following this workshop; this will help populate the UGME exam question bank. More details to follow.
This session has been pre-approved for the Teaching Skills Attainment Award.
Accreditation:
This event is an Accredited Group Learning Activity (Section 1) as defined by the Maintenance of Certification program of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada for 3 hours. This program has been reviewed and approved by the University of Ottawa, Office of Continuing Professional Development. This Group Learning program meets the certification criteria of the College of Family Physicians of Canada and has been certified by the University of Ottawa’s Office of Continuing Professional Development for up to 3 Mainpro+ credits.