Structured Versus Unstructured Questions for Formative Assessment in Physiology: A comparative study among Phase 1 MBBS students.

Introduction: Medical education has opened up to accept many changing conIntroduction: Medical education has opened up to accept many changing concepts in the field of education. Physiology question papers in our university so far have been open ended and not structured ones. Answers for open-ended questions are also a subject to bias during evaluation. This has greatly influenced their study pattern and their performance in the exams. Therefore, I thought to assess of performance of Phase 1 MBBS students with structured questions to conventional questions and to compare perception of Phase 1 MBBS students towards structured questions versus conventional questions in formative assessments.Methods: Six formative assessments were done on Phase 1 MBBS students. Only those students present on the day of exam were considered. They were divided into 2 groups, one group received structured questions and the other received unstructured questions for the assessments. Each of the assessment was of one-hour duration and carried 40 marks. Perception was taken at the end for both the formats of assessments.Results: The performance is compared by <i>Independent t test. </i>Overall mean marks scored by students with structured questions is 14.29 ±5.57 and with unstructured questions is 14.643 ±6.07. Similar performance is seen in all the six assessments and there is no significant difference in the marks scored by the students. A significant number of the student disagreed that structured questions helped score better. Conclusion: This study shows that there is no difference in performance of students with respect to structured or unstructured questions for formative assessment.stion papers in our university so far have been open ended and not structured ones. Answers for open-ended questions are also a subject to bias during evaluation. This has greatly influenced their study pattern and their performance in the exams. Therefore, I thought to assess of performance of Phase 1 MBBS students with structured questions to conventional questions and to compare perception of Phase 1 MBBS students towards structured questions versus conventional questions in formative assessments. Methods: Six formative assessments were done on Phase 1 MBBS students. Only those students present on the day of exam were considered. They were divided into 2 groups, one group received structured questions and the other received unstructured questions for the assessments. Each of the assessment was of one-hour duration and carried 40 marks. Perception was taken at the end for both the formats of assessments. Results: The performance is compared by <i>Independent t test. </i>Overall mean marks scored by students with structured questions is 14.29 ±5.57 and with unstructured questions is 14.643 ±6.07. Similar performance is seen in all the six assessments and there is no significant difference in the marks scored by the students. A significant number of the student disagreed that structured questions helped score better. Conclusion: This study shows that there is no difference in performance of students with respect to structured or unstructured questions for formative assessment.