What faculty write versus what students see? Perspectives on multiple-choice questions using Bloom's taxonomy.

BACKGROUND: Using revised Bloom's taxonomy, some medical educators assume they can write multiple choice questions (MCQs) that specifically assess higher (analyze, apply) versus lower-order (recall) learning. The purpose of this study was to determine whether three key stakeholder groups (students, faculty, and education assessment experts) assign MCQs the same higher- or lower-order level. METHODS: In Phase 1, stakeholders' groups assigned 90 MCQs to Bloom's levels. In Phase 2, faculty wrote 25 MCQs specifically intended as higher- or lower-order. Then, 10 students assigned these questions to Bloom's levels. RESULTS: In Phase 1, there was low interrater reliability within the student group (Krippendorf's alpha = 0.37), the faculty group (alpha = 0.37), and among three groups (alpha = 0.34) when assigning questions as higher- or lower-order. The assessment team alone had high interrater reliability (alpha = 0.90). In Phase 2, 63% of students agreed with the faculty as to whether the MCQs were higher- or lower-order. There was low agreement between paired faculty and student ratings (Cohen's Kappa range .098-.448, mean .256). DISCUSSION: For many questions, faculty and students did not agree whether the questions were lower- or higher-order. While faculty may try to target specific levels of knowledge or clinical reasoning, students may approach the questions differently than intended.

Pushing Critical Thinking Skills With Multiple-Choice Questions: Does Bloom's Taxonomy Work?

Medical school assessments should foster the development of higher-order thinking skills to support clinical reasoning and a solid foundation of knowledge. Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are commonly used to assess student learning, and well-written MCQs can support learner engagement in higher levels of cognitive reasoning such as application or synthesis of knowledge. Bloom's taxonomy has been used to identify MCQs that assess students' critical thinking skills, with evidence suggesting that higher-order MCQs support a deeper conceptual understanding of scientific process skills. Similarly, clinical practice also requires learners to develop higher-order thinking skills that include all of Bloom's levels. Faculty question writers and examinees may approach the same material differently based on varying levels of knowledge and expertise, and these differences can influence the cognitive levels being measured by MCQs. Consequently, faculty question writers may perceive that certain MCQs require higher-order thinking skills to process the question, whereas examinees may only need to employ lower-order thinking skills to render a correct response. Likewise, seemingly lower-order questions may actually require higher-order thinking skills to respond correctly. In this Perspective, the authors describe some of the cognitive processes examinees use to respond to MCQs. The authors propose that various factors affect both the question writer and examinee's interaction with test material and subsequent cognitive processes necessary to answer a question.

Structure, optical properties, and magnetism of the full Zn(1-x)Cu(x)WO4 (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) composition range.

Microcrystalline and submicrometer powders of Zn(1-x)Cu(x)WO(4) (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) have been prepared by a solid-state synthesis from stoichiometric quantities of the constituent d-block metal oxide and tungsten oxide as well as from a Pechini sol-gel synthesis starting from the d-block metal nitrate and ammonium metatungstate. The stoichiometry of the product is confirmed by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) analysis. X-ray diffraction shows that for the entire range of compositions, a single-phase product crystallizes in the wolframite structure, with a symmetry-lowering transition from P2/c to P1[overline] at x = 0.20, concomitant with the first-order Jahn-Teller distortion of Cu(2+). Far-IR spectroscopy corroborates that symmetry lowering is directly related to the tetragonal distortion within the CuO(6) octahedra, with the Zn-O A(u) symmetry mode at 320 cm(-1) (x = 0) splitting into two stretches at 295 and 338 cm(-1) (x = 0.3). UV-vis-NIR spectroscopy shows an optical absorption edge characteristic of an indirect band gap that linearly decreases in energy from 3.0 eV (x = 0) to 2.25 eV (x = 1). SQUID magnetometry shows that Zn(1-x)Cu(x)WO(4) (0.1 ≤ x ≤ 1) has an effective moment of 2.30 ± 0.19 µ(B) per mol copper, typical of Cu(2+) in extended solids. For high concentrations of copper (x ≥ 0.8), two transitions are observed: one at high-temperature, 82 K (x = 1.0) that decreases to 59 K (x = 0.8), and the Néel temperature, 23.5 K (x = 1.0) that decreases to 5.5 K (x = 0.8). For x < 0.8, no long-range order is observed. A physical 1:1 mixture of both CuWO(4):ZnWO(4) shows magnetic ordering identical to that of CuWO(4).