Self-Confidence Assessment During Computer-Assisted Testing in Histology

Abstract

A computer-assisted self-testing system has been developed allowing students to evaluate their own knowledge and their ability for identifying unknown histological structures. It consists of an image digitizing-editing system, an image database shared through a local area network, and teacher’s and student’s environments.

The authoring system allows the teacher to define text frames, multiple-choice and open-ended questions. The student’s environment includes on-line help and recording of the student’s identification, answers, scores and messages. The educational impact of the system was testcd with a limited number of students. Depending upon previous evaluations, two groups of good and of weak students were randomly selected, half of whom uscd the System. Marks in histology at the final examination were significantly increased for the weak students as compared to the subgroup of weak students not using the system. On the other end, no significant difference was observed among the good students.

The system has been implemented with a self-confidence assessment (SCA) procedure introduced before the correction of the student’s answer. Up to July 1992, thousands of SCA scores were recorded, analyzed and correlated with the academic results.

A strong positive correlation was found between the SCA scores and the marks at the final examinations for good students whereas a negative but loose correlation was observed for weak students.