The quality of a PeerWise MCQ repository

  • Authors:

  • Helen Purchase;John Hamer;Paul Denny;Andrew Luxton-Reilly

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland;The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand;The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand;The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the Twelfth Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 103
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

PeerWise allows students to create a repository of multiple choice questions which can be attempted by their peers, and discussed between them online. PeerWise 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 PeerWise) 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.