1. Assessing Students’ Understanding of Leadership Theory through an Online Multiple Choice Test: Lessons from a Manchester Leadership Programme Pilot

2. ‘It was alright, the exam, as it was.’

3. Leadership in Action Units: A little bit of context Basic premise: Units explore C21st problems and leadership required to address them The academic units: 10 or 20 credits, level 2(5) Lecture-based or online Large cohorts drawn from across all Faculties Different disciplines; different academic literacies Extensive use of Blackboard Forced to innovate

4. Rationale for Introducing MCQ Lecture-based 10 credit unit had 2 points of assessment Group ePoster (60%) Online Assessed Discussions (40%) What feedback was telling us: Students sometimes struggled to make connections between lectures and leadership Leadership models and theories introduced but understanding not explicitly tested ILOs made claims we couldn’t substantiate Group project worth > 50% of mark problematic What we did (in conjunction with academic lead): Increased lecture input on leadership models and theories Developed core reading list to underpin/complement MCQ to test reading Final discussion question: reflect on learning about leadership Make systematic and explicit connections between parts of unit

5. Challenges We Anticipated Large cohort – Semester 1 – 341 students – Semester 2 – 205 students Interdisciplinarity Resources Technical issues

6. Student Feedback Liked having a variety of assessments Less stressful than essays and exams MCQ tests are easier to pass: – educated guessing is possible – confidence-boosting – average marks

7. Challenges That Emerged Question design Too many resources on the reading list Future development: – More scenario-based questions – Remove references to texts in questions – Free text responses - essay grading software?

8. Knowledge retention Incentivised to read Application of reading / learning – ‘If you do the reading, you learn a lot’ Unit Intended Learning Outcome: ‘Students should be able to: understand and critically evaluate a range of different models and theories of leadership appreciate different styles of leadership within a cultural context’ Outcomes

9. Learning Experiences ‘The information I learnt about leadership theories is memorable, and I think I will remember them – because they were different to everything else I was doing; and because of the reading we had to do.’ ‘The MCQ test reassured you that you had understood the theory.’

10. Discussion