Abstract
New dental accreditation standards emphasize that graduates must be competent in the use of critical thinking (a high cognitive-level skill). Despite this new standard, most written assessments in dental school courses are still based on low cognitive-level questions. The aim of this study was to determine if an exercise that allows students to collaboratively write exam questions would help cultivate higher cognitive levels of learning. To evaluate this exercise at one U.S. dental school, the cognitive level (according to Bloom's taxonomy) of multiple-choice exam questions and students' scores across two cohorts in a cariology course were compared. This evaluation took place using a control group in which questions were instructor-generated and an intervention group in which students worked in groups to develop questions. All students in one first-year class participated in the intervention group (n=104); all students in the first-year class two years earlier served as the control group (n=106). Among students in the intervention group, the response rate to a post-intervention survey measuring students' attitudes about the experience was 70% (N=73). The results showed that the students generating their own assessments developed higher cognitive-level exam questions than the instructor-generated assessments. The intervention group (with student-generated assessments) also performed as well or better on tests compared to the control group (with instructor-generated assessments). In the intervention group survey, the vast majority of students agreed that the exercise was helpful for their overall learning experience, but working in teams was said to be the least valuable component of the activity for their learning. This study suggests that student-driven, collaborative assessments can be an important tool for building critical thinking skills in dental classrooms and that it may be worthwhile to expand this type of exercise into other courses.
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