The Use of Collaborative Technology Free

Each exam question comprises three parts: the scenario, the stem, and the options (Kranz et al., 2019). The scenario sets the stage for the stem, giving a clinical problem to be solved. The stem poses the question, and the options consist of plausible choices in which a student should choose the correct answer from the distractors (Kranz et al., 2019). In exam development, it is best practice that answer choices be equal in length, amount of detail, and order (Kranz et al., 2019). Faculty should also review the question's proper grammar, verb tense, and verbiage (Kranz et al., 2019). High-quality questions ensure the learner can apply and analyze the information presented. The results highlight how a student thinks, identifies misconceptions, and provides a basis for the assignment of overall course grades (Rudolph et al., 2019). A way that faculty can assess the quality of the questions and the exam is with item analysis. Item analysis evaluates by examining the test questions and the student's answers statistically.

Best practice is for faculty to conduct a post-examination review of an exam's central tendency, reliability, item difficulty, item discrimination, and distractor efficiency (Hensel & Cifrino, 2022). The measures of central tendency are the most basic statistical results; this includes the mean, median, range, and standard deviation. Internal consistency or reliability is usually determined using Kuder Richardson (KR) or Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The higher the internal consistency, the more likely the exam will reflect the equality of the tested concepts (Hensel & Cifrino, 2022). Item difficulty examines how difficult a question was for each student. An easy question would have an item difficulty of 0.81 or higher, 0.80-0.70 is scored as average, 0.51-.69 is complex, and 0. 50 or less is very difficult (Hensel & Cifrino, 2022). Item discrimination evaluates how well high-performing students answered a question compared to the lower-performing students; this is usually evaluated using a point biserial correlation. The point biserial correlation provides a predictive number that correlates whether the student who would be expected to answer a question correctly actually did (Mc- Gahee & Ball, 2009).

The final step in an exam review is analyzing response frequency, how frequently the correct response was selected, and the incorrect responses selected, also called distractors. The correct group response gives the faculty the total number of students who answered each choice. If the question has more than 50% incorrect responses, faculty should examine the question and answer options. The non-distractors are the potential answers not selected by every student (Hensel & Cifrino, 2022). Fortunately, with the development of electronic online testing administration, exam software generates a complete item analysis. It is then incumbent upon nursing faculty to set aside time to review the item analysis and make decisions about exam questions.

Tracking exam questions and tracking changes after item analysis each semester can be a challenge for nursing faculty. The challenge is even more evident for faculty who engage in team teaching. Team teaching requires that multiple nursing faculty teach course content, co-create exams, and engage in item analysis within the same course (Hellier & Davidson, 2018). With the development and increased use of collaborative software, an innovative approach was designed to enhance and streamline the exam development and item analysis process.

Utilizing the collaborative sharing options within Microsoft Office 365, the course coordinator for an undergraduate nursing course created an intuitive document to assist the faculty team in the development, review, item analysis, and revision of course exams. A collaborative Excel document was created and shared with all faculty team members. The document displays five colored tabs for each exam within the semester (see Figure 1). Each tab includes a list of the various concepts on the exam and additional information (see Figure 2). The faculty team members input the question title and identification number into the document located in the testing software repository. Faculty also indicate whether questions are next-generation and select all that apply, are previously used, or are newly developed. Each faculty member is also responsible for indicating that a rationale has been uploaded that provides sufficient information for a student to understand why the question was scored incorrectly.

All team members have a deadline to complete these tasks before each exam. Once the information is entered in the Excel spreadsheet, the course coordinator engages in a thorough review of the exam to ensure the correct number of questions are entered, cultural and language biases are eliminated, and the questions are written according to the National Council for State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) best practice exam development. Requests for revisions to questions are communicated through the Excel document in a column marked course coordinator feedback. The faculty are provided three days to make the suggested corrections or provide a rationale for keeping the question as is. Once the review and revision process are complete, the exam is ready to be administered to students.

Once the exam is administered and the item analysis is made available, the course coordinator shares the results with the faculty team and requests an examination of any question with a difficulty level of less than 0.70 and a point biserial of less than 0.25. Faculty are asked to share their decision about the question in the designated column. This decision could be to keep the question, credit the question to all, or accept more than one answer based on the responses of the upper and lower-performing students. Faculty are provided 24 hours to complete the review of the item analysis in preparation for a video conference to discuss findings and decisions. During the video conference, a shared screen is used to review the Excel collaborative spreadsheet and discuss each team member's decision. An additional column includes the decisions agreed upon and the plan to ensure improvement in the question before it is administered again. The document intends to have a perpetual archive that can be referred to each semester, ensuring reliable questions are kept, and poor-performing questions are revised based on the findings from the item analysis.

Exam development and item analysis are significant components of undergraduate nurse educators' roles and responsibilities. The creation of innovative pedagogical processes such as this collaborative document assists faculty in balancing teaching expectations and dedicating quality time and effort to creating valid and reliable exams. The dissemination of this approach will assist nurse educators in utilizing technology to help ease workload. Using this shared exam document, nurse educators will create high-quality nursing exams to prepare nursing students for the Next-Generation NCLEX and clinical practice.