Evaluating the impact of faculty development programme initiative: Are we really improving skills in MCQ writing?

A series of seven workshops were conducted in 2018, at the National University of Medical Sciences and its affiliated institutes, to evaluate the effectiveness of a three-hour workshop in improving faculty competence in developing high quality test items. Participants' satisfaction was evaluated with a post-workshop feedback questionnaire. A self-made structured questionnaire was required to be filled as a pre-test and post-test assessment. Paired t-test was applied and difference in mean scores of responses was evaluated. A total of 141 faculty members were trained. The training session led to high satisfaction in all elements of workshop, significant improvements in boosting confidence in item writing skills (p=0.001), recognising parts of MCQs (p=0.001), identifying item writing flaws (p=0.001), and levels of Millers pyramid and blooms taxonomy (p=0.001). Training sessions of short duration are effective in improving faculty competence in writing high quality test items, if hands-on experience is built-in and effective feedback is provided.