Student Learning with Generated and Answered Peer-written Questions

Area of Science:

• Medicinal Chemistry Education
• Educational Technology
• Student Learning

Background:

• Active learning strategies are crucial for student success in complex science courses.
• Peer-generated content platforms offer novel pedagogical approaches.
• Understanding the impact of specific student-generated activities on performance is essential.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if student-generated questions or answering peer-generated multiple-choice questions predicts academic performance in medicinal chemistry.
• To analyze the relationship between student reputation scores and course grades.
• To identify which components of peer interaction are most strongly correlated with student success.

Main Methods:

• Students in Medicinal Chemistry III over three years used PeerWise to create and answer questions.
• Student reputation scores (question authoring, answering, rating) and answer correctness were analyzed.
• These metrics were correlated with final course grades.

Main Results:

• Students who generated more highly rated questions performed better, accounting for 12% of grade variability.
• Performance differences were most pronounced between the top and bottom performing students.
• The quantity of questions answered by students was not a significant predictor of course performance.

Conclusions:

• Generating highly rated, thoughtful questions is a predictor of medicinal chemistry course performance.
• However, this activity only explains a small fraction of the variability in course grades.
• The accuracy of answers provided by students did not correlate with their overall performance.