Assessing Students’
Understanding of Leadership
Theory through an Online
Multiple Choice Test:
Lessons from a Manchester
Leadership Programme Pilot
‘It was alright, the exam, as it was.’
Leadership in Action Units:
A little bit of context
• Basic premise:
• Units explore C21st problems and leadership
required to address them
• The academic units:
• 10 or 20 credits, level 2(5)
• Lecture-based or online
• Large cohorts drawn from across all Faculties
• Different disciplines; different academic literacies
• Extensive use of Blackboard
• Forced to innovate
Rationale for Introducing MCQ
• Lecture-based 10 credit unit had 2 points of assessment
•
•
Group ePoster (60%)
Online Assessed Discussions (40%)
• What feedback was telling us:
•
•
•
•
Students sometimes struggled to make connections between lectures and
leadership
Leadership models and theories introduced but understanding not explicitly
tested
ILOs made claims we couldn’t substantiate
Group project worth > 50% of mark problematic
• What we did (in conjunction with academic lead):
•
•
•
•
•
Increased lecture input on leadership models and theories
Developed core reading list to underpin/complement
MCQ to test reading
Final discussion question: reflect on learning about leadership
Make systematic and explicit connections between parts of unit
Challenges We Anticipated
• Large cohort
– Semester 1 – 341 students
– Semester 2 – 205 students
• Interdisciplinarity
• Resources
• Technical issues
Student Feedback
• Liked having a variety of assessments
• Less stressful than essays and exams
• MCQ tests are easier to pass:
– educated guessing is possible
– confidence-boosting
– average marks
Challenges That Emerged
• Question design
• Too many resources on the reading list
• Future development:
– More scenario-based questions
– Remove references to texts in questions
– Free text responses - essay grading software?
Outcomes
•
•
•
Knowledge retention
Incentivised to read
Application of reading / learning – ‘If you do the reading,
you learn a lot’
Unit Intended Learning Outcome:
‘Students should be able to:
• understand and critically evaluate a range of different
models and theories of leadership
• appreciate different styles of leadership within a cultural
context’
Learning Experiences
‘The information I learnt about leadership
theories is memorable, and I think I will
remember them – because they were different
to everything else I was doing; and because of
the reading we had to do.’
‘The MCQ test reassured you that you had
understood the theory.’
Discussion