Exploring the Effects of the Collaborative and Cooperative Test-construction Strategies

Abstract

Based on the positive impacts of the student-question-generation strategy, this study extended the question-generation activity to the test construction activity. The test-construction activity is even more complex than composing questions, and this activity may demand more of learners’ mental efforts. This study adopted the concept of shared cognitive capacity, which is proposed by the cognitive load theory. Specifically, to avoid students being overloaded, collaborative and cooperative learning were integrated into the test-construction process. A pre-and-post experiment was conducted via online workshop for seven weeks. 79 subjects were randomly assigned to one of the interventions, collaborative test construction activity, cooperative test construction activity and individual test construction activity. A statistically significant difference in students’ mastery of the newly learned contents among the three intervention groups was found; however, such an effect was not found in the variables of reported use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Implications for the practice and future research will be provided.