Does student confidence on multiple-choice question assessments provide useful information?

Context: Feedback from multiple-choice question (MCQ) assessments is typically limited to a percentage correct score, from which estimates of student competence are inferred. The students' confidence in their answers and the potential impact of incorrect answers on clinical care are seldom recorded. Our purpose was to evaluate student confidence in incorrect responses and to establish how confidence was influenced by the potential clinical impact of answers, question type and gender.

Identifying student misconceptions in biomedical course assessments in dental education.

Dental student performance on examinations has traditionally been estimated by calculating the percentage of correct responses rather than by identifying student misconceptions. Although misconceptions can impede student learning and are refractory to change, they are seldom measured in biomedical courses in dental schools. Our purpose was to determine if scaling student confidence and the clinical impact of incorrect answers could be used on multiple-choice questions (MCQs) to identify potential student misconceptions.

Dental students' self-assessment of preclinical examinations.

Accurate self-assessment is an important attribute for practicing dentists and, therefore, an important skill to develop in dental students. Our purpose was to examine the relationship between faculty and student assessments of preclinical prosthodontic procedures. Seventy-six second-year students completed two consecutive examinations and two self-assessments.

Correlation of admissions criteria with academic performance in dental students.

Our purpose was to compare admissions criteria as predictors of dental school performance in underachieving and normally tracking dental students. Underachieving dental students were identified by selecting ten students with the lowest class grade point average following the first year of dental school from five classes, resulting in a pool of fifty students. Normally tracking students served as a control and were randomly selected from students who had completed their first year of dental school not in the underachieving group.

The correlation of student performance in preclinical and clinical prosthodontic assessments.

Tracking student performance in preclinical and clinical courses can be helpful in developing and refining a curriculum. Our objective was to correlate student performance on three fixed prosthodontic examinations taken by eighty junior dental students. Examinations included a knowledge-based objective structured clinical examination (OSCE), a manual skills exercise completed on a typodont (Typodont), and a competency casting exam (Casting CE) on a patient.