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?

• 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’

Outcomes

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