In recent times, as teachers, we’ve been creating assessments mainly with multiple-choice questions -or single-best-answers (SBA). However, SBA questions can give a false impression of students’ competence while Very Short Answers (VSAs) questions have greater authenticity and can provide useful information regarding students’ cognitive errors, helping to improve learning as well as assessment.

MCQ questions are vastly used in TBL. They are very popular with lecturers for various reasons, but primarily because they can be used to assess topics with high reliability and are a very practical question format as they are automatically marked by computers. As they provide a definitive correct answer, the answer is not subject to interpretation.

However, recent research on single-best answers like MCQs has debated their validity for assessment -calling them in some cases “inherently flawed” for certain educational contexts.

Additionally, MCQ question types provide a set of “fixed” answers, in which one of them is the single best choice. The provided answers give narrow the students’ attention to just those options and, of course, offering as signification cueing.

In contrast, VSAs have a description followed by a lead-in question but no “possible answers”. Instead of having to select one of the possible answers like in the MCQs, the students are prompted to provide their own answers.

VSAs are designed so that the answer required is one to five words in length. The possible answers from the students can be pre-programmed correct and incorrect answers allow the VSA responses of most candidates to be marked automatically. Any responses not fitting the pre-programmed answers are then reviewed by the lecturer who examines the answer and might accept it as correct.

In 2019, academics from the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (Singapore) and Imperial College London Medical School ascertain that VSAs can be used in the context of Team-Based Learning (TBL) effectively.

A study with 200+ students in Dec 2019 was conducted using VSAs in the context of TBL using LAMS.

The use of VSAs in Team-Based Learning has been effective and the feedback from the students is very positive. Currently, both Medical schools (LKC -Singapore and Imperial -UK) deploy online TBL lessons utilising VSAs questions.

Participants will:
Explore alternative assessment options for RATs