Customer-Driven Development for Rapid Production of Assessment Learning Objects

Customer-Driven Development is a technique from the software development method called extreme Programming (XP) where customers (most importantly including end users of all levels) are closely involved in the software design and redesign process. This method of producing software suitable for customers has been adapted to help in the production of e-learning material, in particular, Assessment Learning Objects (ALOs) consisting of multiple-choice questions. Asking undergraduate students to produce multiple-choice questions as part of their formal assessment processes facilitated this. The outcome shows two distinct benefits to this process. Firstly, the students who took part in this project benefited from the encouragement to participate in reflective learning, both on the specific topic on which they chose to produce a multiple choice question, and in the methods and purposes of multiple choice questions (which form a significant part of their self-assessment regime and summative assessment exam). Secondly, of the questions produced by students a significant number of them were of suitable quality to be used for future cohorts and to be made available to the wider community. This gives two important benefits to staff: developing a wide range of questions is difficult and time consuming; student insight into misunderstandings of material can often be greater than that of staff. Resources for the development of ALOs are scarce and given that students benefit directly from being asked to develop their own questions, the year-on-year expansion of a question set produced by students can be a very useful resource.