Members of the Dirisana+ consortium want to address various formative and summative assessments as a means to improve the quality of education in constrained environments in sub-Saharan Africa. As part of this, large test question data banks will be created, expanded and shared within and between institutions of the consortium, student perceptions on electronic assessment for self-regulated learning will be gauged, the feasibility of tele-education in rural settings reviewed, and current learning tool functionalities assessed.

Training workshops

Verious training workshops were held to equip academics to develop high-quality multiple choice and short answer questions

Prod Cees van der Vleuten travelled from Maastricht Univeristy to present a workshop to academics from the University of Pretoria, Unviersity of Namibia, Welwitchia University, Sefako Makgatho University and University of the Witwatersrand. Recordings of the sessions are available in the Assessment Bank Report below.

MCQ and SAQ Question Banks

The assessment committee consisting of members from the consortium are currently building question banks for osteology, histology, embryology, anatomy and pharmacology that will be shared between institutions and hopefully in the future given access to various health care science institutes in Southern Africa to use for assessments for health care students. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for the creation of questions have been developed to ensure all questions are made consistency across all platforms. The SOPs have been quality assured by professionals in the field and various workshops have been given to members to ensure they learn the quality assurance process when they assess questions. Once questions have been assess and edited, questions are then uploaded on to the ROGO system under various topics. This system is used for the storage and will allow for the sharing and distribution of all the question banks. 

View our full process for question development, quality assurance, and sharing in the attached report.