Shifting the process of exam preparation towards active learning: A crowdsourcing based approach

Students are usually only marginally involved in the preparation of exams. They are passive peers who write an exam predefined by the lecturer. Studies in educational theory indicate, however, that active involvement instead of (passive) consumption should be adopted in learning since active learning proved to be superior to passive learning. One concept of active learning is student peer evaluation where students are mutually responsible for peer reviewing. This paper extends student peer evaluation by a Crowdsourcing based approach within the process of exam preparation. Students are equipped with more responsibilities, they design, comment and evaluate exam questions and build a considerable question pool for exams. A system tracks all interactions when typing in exam questions. Thus, individualized exams can be provided. The large set of exam questions even allows for exams that are written at an individual time. We expect that such a formative knowledge acquisition by students might improve student achievements and even reduce the number of drop-outs.