Pam Cherry from the division of Midwifery and Radiography describes how she embedded WileyPlus MCQs in her formative assessment to support self-study.
Anatomy and physiology are 2 of the core subjects for year 1 radiotherapy students. There is a very large amount of work to learn, but this underpins everything the students do whilst on clinical placement. For seven years now, anatomy and physiology for year 1 radiotherapy students has been facilitated via the use of an online educational resource called WileyPlus.
This resource essentially has our core textbook available online for the students, together with many additional features for both lecturers and the students. Lecturers support the student’s learning either side of their own formative work that they carry out online. Anatomy and physiology are taught in system, and by using WileyPlus the students learn a new system a week, with the exception of a few of the larger systems such as CNS and alimentary, which are covered in 2 weeks.
A typical system is covered as follows:
Week 1
Tuesday – a one hour overview of the system delivered via a lecture and often a short You Tube video
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday – self study where students attempt a reading assignment, followed by an MCQ on WileyPlus. The contents of the reading assignment are selected and set by the lecturer and in addition WileyPlus has interactive tasks that students can attempt such as ‘click and drag’ labelling of diagrams, clinical case studies with questions, colouring in etc.
The MCQ closes at 10pm on Sunday evening and the lecturer can see the results for the whole cohort in the grade book.
The questions can be set so that after 2 incorrect answers the students can see the correct one – but are not assigned a mark to it.
Week 2
Monday – Any student with a poor score on the WileyPlus MCQ is spoken to by the lecturer to find out if there are any specific learning problems and then remedial action is taken if necessary. Students are then given a lecture on the Oncology of that system to finish it off.
Tuesday – an introductory session on the next anatomical system and the cycle starts again
Benefits of these formative assessments
- Students have protected study time to complete the formative MCQ assessment each week
- The online nature of WileyPlus means that there is flexibility for the students as to when they study, allowing mature students for example, to study at a time that suits their family commitments.
- WileyPlus is an adaptive system, so if students choose to undertake any further questions independently – which is an option they can use, the system will produce easier or harder questions for them depending on the results of their previous test as it has a question bank of over 7,000 questions.
- The Reading and MCQ tests can be re opened and re assigned to the cohort for revision purposes prior to examinations.
- Students who are not engaging with the system are quickly picked up and can be monitored by the module leader and offered further support if necessary.