Evaluation of the utility of objective-type questions as a method of promoting deeper learning in the subject of dental materials: An interventional prospective study.

The
students will be explained the purpose of the study, and willing students will be
asked to sign the consent form.

 A particular topic in the subject of dental materials will be taught by conventional didactic teaching and a pretest comprising of 30 multiple-choice questions which have been item analyzed before will be administered to all the participants. After the pretest the participating students will be divided into two groups an interventional group and a control group comprising of all the three types of achievers. The intervention will be administered, and a post test will be administered for the entire participating study population. Difference in the pre and posttest scores of the interventional and control groups will be statistically analyzed.

A cross over will be done for the same intervention for another topic of comparative difficulty by switching the control group to interventional group and vice versa.

Written feedback will be taken from the interventional group at the end of posttest.

The details of the interventions as follows

This intervention will consist of students constructing 9 MCQs from the topic taught using didactic teaching. They will be allowed the use of books and verified internet resources. To prevent the students from copying from entrance exam MCQ books, they will be provided with 3 single best response questions with four options as a template from the distractors of which they will make the MCQs. This will help the student constructed questions to remain relevant to the topic. The student constructed MCQ`s will be discussed in group which will be moderated by a faculty member.

This intervention will consist of students editing distractors for 9 standardized multiple-choice questions to make them better. The same will be followed by a group discussion with a faculty about the distractors made by the students.

The intervention will consist of students constructing match the following item type of question. They will make one extended matching question with 9 items in one Column and 5 in the other column so that the items are unequal in both, and each item can be used once, more than ones or not at all. They can take help of the textbook.

The intervention group will be given a match-the-following-question task to solve, which includes unequal items in both columns. They will be allowed to use the textbook for solving the question, and 10 minutes will be allocated for the activity.

The intervention group will be instructed to construct 5 multiple answer questions, in which one, more than one or none of the options can be correct. Each question will have 5 options. They can refer to the textbook for help.

6. The interventional group will be given 5 multiple-choice questions to solve at the end of the didactic session. They can take the help of the textbook to solve the same.