Development and Preliminary Evaluation of an Online System in Support of a Student-Generated Testlets Learning Activity

Abstract

Currently, around fifty online learning systems have been developed to support student-generated questions (SGQ) activities, highlighting the various affordances of computers and networked technologies. While a variety of question types are commonly supported in these online SGQ systems, no systems are in existence that support student generation of the testlet format — an attractive test format that is becoming increasingly prevalent and prominent in contemporary testing and assessment practices. In view of this research gap, this study is aimed toward two research goals: first, to develop an online learning system in support of student generated testlets learning activities, and second, to preliminarily assess its learning potential. Two general design principles that guide the development of the student-generated testlets online learning system (i.e., flexibility and cognitive support) are described first. Afterwards, the evaluation study used to assess the learning potential of student-generated testlets as compared to SGQ is presented. Based on the data collected from a sixth-grade class of students (n = 28), it was found that significantly more participants felt the online testlet-generation task as better promoting learning as compared to SGQ, X2 = 9.93, p < .01. Furthermore, based on the result of the constant comparative method done on the participants’ provided explanatory reasons, the distinct feature of student-generated testlets, specifically, the situation/scenario, and its possible positive and negative effects on learning were highlighted to provide suggestions for future studies.