Biochemistry

233 PeerWise Assignment 2012

(10% of your total semester mark)

It is said that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it! In this assignment you are to design four multiple-choice questions (MCQ) covering different aspects of the syllabus and also evaluate eight multiple-choice questions from other students. This assignment not only allows you to develop your knowledge by designing and writing questions but also to review and revise the subject by answering questions designed by other students (your peers). To do this assignment you need to use a new web-based system called PeerWise. Logging in to PeerWise PeerWise is a web-based tool and you will need to log into web site at: http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/at/?curtin_au. You need a specific Course ID and Personal ID (PeerWise calls this an identifier) that will enable you to log on to the PeerWise web site. You will be notified of your Course ID at the start of first semester. Your personal ID is your student number. You should note the following: Once you log in to the site you can give yourself a username. This username is only known by the administrators of the system (your unit coordinator and the administrator of PeerWise). Your real identity is known by your unit coordinator, but is unknown by the administrator of PeerWise. Your real identity, and your PeerWise username, are not seen by any other student using PeerWise. You DO NOT let any other student know your PeerWise ID or username. Please provide an email when you initially log in to PeerWise in case you forget your password. After logging in and selecting your course, you will be shown the Main menu for that course. The Main menu is divided into three areas: 1. Your questions. These are questions you have contributed 2. Answered questions. These are questions you have answered 3. Unanswered questions. This section contains All questions which are questions that remain unanswered and Followed questions are questions of particular authors that you are following Figure 1 shows the main menu and the three sections on the page.

 Figure 1. Main Menu of PeerWise

Designing and Writing Multiple Choice Questions When designing and writing questions you have to provide five things: 1. The question text or stem 2. The correct answer (also called the key) 3. The distractors in the answer 4. An explanation for the answer 5. A topic for the question Each question you design should address different aspects of the syllabus. A multiple-choice question is constructed by writing a question stem this is the question itself and four plausible answers to the question. Only one of the answers is correct and three of the answers are incorrect. The three incorrect answers are called distractors. All the answers should be labelled from A to D. The distracters, as the name suggests, are designed to distract the student from the correct answer. However, this distraction is really only designed to help the student think about the question! The following is an example of a multiple-choice question with a question stem and four alternative answers labeled A to D. One of the answers is correct and the other three are the distractors.

Example of a multiple-choice question.

The average molecular weight of the 20 standard amino acids is 138, but biochemists use 110 when estimating the number of amino acids in a protein of known molecular weight. Why? A. The number 110 takes into account the relatively small size of nonstandard amino acids. B. The number 110 reflects the higher proportion of small amino acids in proteins, as well as the loss of water when the peptide bond forms. C. The number 110 is based on the fact that the average molecular weight of a protein is 110,000 with an average of 1,000 amino acids. D. The number 110 reflects the number of amino acids found in the typical small protein, and only small proteins have their molecular weight estimated this way

You should also provide full explanation (feedback) for the correct answer. For example the explanation for the above example could be something like the following: Example of an answer and explanation to a multiple choice question
The correct answer is B. The molecular weights (MW) of free amino acids (that is amino acids not covalently bound in a polypeptide or other molecules) varies from the smallest amino acid glycine to the largest amino acid tryptophan. If you average all the molecular weights of the free amino acids you get a molecular weight (MW) of 138. However, two things contribute to a smaller average: (1) There is a higher proportion of small amino acids in proteins. (2) When amino acids are joined in a polypeptide chain water (H2O) is lost because it is a condensation reaction. Consequently, each amino acid (except the N and C terminal amino acids) essentially loses 18 units from its free MW.

When writing multiple-choice questions you must consider the following: The questions must be at an appropriate level of knowledge for the student audience. In this case at second year university level. Questions should not only assess a students ability to recall facts, but also try and address higher order thinking skills. These higher order thinking skills such as application, analysis, and evaluation of biochemical knowledge. Actually, you are using higher order thinking skills when you research, design, and write (create) your own multiple-choice questions! The distracters must be closely related to the subject and not be too easily distinguished as incorrect. That is, the distracters should not be so obviously incorrect that the question can be answered by simple elimination of the distracters. The distracters should be meaningful and plausible. Distracters could also be misconceptions that students have

Important! If you have any less than four alternative answers (one of which is the correct answer) in your MCQ then you will not receive a mark for the question. The questions should be your own design and not copied from any other source. The quality of your MCQs, and your ability to design effective and useful MCQs will be determined by your peers who will evaluate your questions. Your questions will be listed in the Your questions section of the menu as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. Table of questions that you contribute

about the topic or question posed (you could even use misconceptions that you found yourself to have at one time?) Try to avoid ambiguity. That is, try to write the question such that it is clear and concise and tries not to include options that could be correct answers. You can use a diagram, or other visual aid, if you think it appropriate. You can upload images to PeerWise. Remember to provide other information such as formulae or physical constants such that the student has the appropriate information to answer the question.

The symbols in the Suitability column shown in Figure 2 have the following meaning: OK. This indicates that your question is likely to be suitable for revision purposes.
Your question will require an average rating greater than or equal to 2, and the answer you have suggested is correct must be the most popular alternative selected This indicates that there may be a problem with your question. Either the average rating will be below 2 (in which case there may be a problem with the question itself), or the most popular alternative selected will not be the one you have suggested is correct (which may indicate that there is something tricky about your question). If there is a valid problem with the question, you should delete it.

This indicates that more responses are needed before the suitability can be determined (at least 5 responses are required).

Answering Other Students Multiple Choice Questions You can see all the questions that could be answered by your in the Unanswered Questions section of the main page. Figure 3 also shows that you can review the questions you have answered in PeerWise. Figure 3. Reviewing the Questions you have answered.

The table below shows what the symbols in the Result column mean
Your selected alternative matches the one the author of the question suggested was correct, and is also the most popular alternative selected. Particularly if the question is highly rated, it is very likely that this is indeed the correct answer to the question. Your selected alternative matches the one the author of the question suggested was correct, but it is not the most popular alternative selected Your selected alternative does not match the one the author of the question suggested was correct, however it is the most popular alternative selected Your selected alternative matches the one the author of the question suggested was correct, however there have not yet been enough responses to accurately determine which is the most popular alternative Your selected alternative does not match the one the author of the question suggested was correct, however there have not yet been enough responses to accurately determine which is the most popular alternative Your selected alternative does not match the one the author of the question suggested was correct, which is also the most popular alternative selected. Particularly if the question is highly rated, it is very likely that you have answered this question incorrectly. The alternative you selected, the alternative the author suggested was correct, and the most popular alternative are all different. It is very likely that there is a problem with this question.

 Following an author of a question If there are many students contributing to PeerWise, there may be a large number of questions available for you to answer. One way to discover good questions is to identify authors that are writing good quality questions. If you find a question that you particularly like, the author of that question may have also contributed other good questions. You can choose to follow an author at any time, and this will give you access to all of the questions written by that author. To follow an author, simply click on the Follow button as shown in Figure 4 when viewing the details of a question in the Answered questions section. Figure 4. The Follow button to follow an author of quality questions

Once you have chosen to follow an author, all of their questions that you have not yet answered will appear in the Followed questions section. Personal Tags You can assign your own personal tags to any questions that you have answered. Personal tags are not visible to anyone else, but may help you later to locate certain questions. To add a personal tag to a question, as shown by Figure 5, simply write the tag in the text box and click the Add tag button. Figure 5. The Personal Tag field in PeerWise

A list of the personal tags you have assigned to your answered questions will be displayed on the Answered questions page. Selecting a tag from this list will display only those questions to which you have assigned that tag. You can remove all of the personal tags you have assigned to a question by clicking the Remove all tags button.

 Evaluating Other Students Multiple Choice Questions Obviously to evaluate a question you have to actually read and answer it! After answering the question you get to know the correct answer and whether you were correct or incorrect. You will also see the explanation (feedback) to the question. You then need to do three things (as shown in Figure 6): 1. Rate the question according to its difficulty such as easy, medium or hard 2. Rate it on a 5-point scale where 0 is poor and 5 is excellent 3. Comment on the question. That is critique (not criticise) the students multiple choice question by writing constructive comments. Obviously, you should try and write comments that would help or complement the student you are evaluating. Please do not write disparaging or insulting comments. This is a learning experience and you need to provide positive advice to the person you are evaluating! Provide the kind of feedback that you would find useful and encouraging! Figure 6. Rating Questions

When you evaluate, and rate, multiple-choice questions written by other students you should keep the above points about designing and writing quality MCQs in mind. For example you can ask yourself the following types of questions for your evaluation: Is it high enough quality that it could appear as a question in a final exam?

Other things to keep in mind you should not rate questions differently based on their apparent difficulty an easy question may be just as useful and just as likely to appear in the exam as a hard question be fair with your ratings you should justify a poor rating with a comment to the author of the question, or by agreement with a previously written comment When you rate a question you may also choose to either agree or disagree with any previously written comment as shown in Figure 7. To agree with a comment, select the star in the Agree with comment column. To disagree with a comment select the cross in the Disagree with comment column. If you would like to submit more than one agreement or disagreement then you can return to this form in the Answered questions section. The level of agreement with the comments determines the order in which they are displayed. Figure 7. Agree or Disagree with existing comments

Is the explanation provided with the question sufficient so that if someone answered the question incorrectly the explanation would help them to understand what they have done wrong? Does it have good distractors? Is the question or its distractors ambiguous? Did I learn anything from this question?

Marks for PeerWise You receive 0.5% of your total semester mark for each question you write and 0.5% for each question you evaluate to give you a mark of 6% of your total semester mark. You also receive 4% of your final mark based on your score in PeerWise. Your PeerWise score is a measure of your contribution to PeerWise. The score has three components: a score for writing questions (q), answering questions (a), and evaluating or rating questions (r). For example, Student A may have a score of 344 (17q, 10a, and 7r) which indicates that the total is calculated from the combination of the three components q, a, and r (note it is a calculated score and not simply a sum of the component scores). Student A receives 1 point for the (r) component whenever any other student rates a question the same way as Student A has rated it. Student A receives 1 point for the (a) component every time any other student correctly answers a question that Student A has previously answered correctly. Student A receives 1, 2 or 3 points for the (q) component whenever other students rate Student As questions as a 3, 4 or a 5 respectively. Therefore, to get a high total score, Student A needs to obtain good scores for all three components, rather than just being good at one component. To obtain good scores for the components, you generally need to make contributions that are valued, or agreed with, by other students, and the earlier you make these contributions the better! Leaderboard PeerWise includes a simple leaderboard, as shown below, which includes tables such as the top rated questions, and the most popular contributors.

Badges A recent innovation in PeerWise is Badges. These are an award system based on your contribution, and your peers evaluation of your contribution, to PeerWise. It is simply a way to recognize your efforts but it does not contribute directly to your mark for this assignment.

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