Student-developed database connects med students through quiz questions

Plans to expand the popular service to other universities are in the works

With a user base of over 400 members, approximately 900 questions, and over 16 000 responses, QuizMD has become one of the most frequently used resources among the University of Alberta’s medical students.

Daniel Kozan, a second-year medical student and the creator of QuizMD, designed the online bank of multiple-choice practice questions to allow students the opportunity to evaluate their level of understanding in various topics while reinforcing their own knowledge by adding their own questions. With the goal of expanding its services to be endorsed by all universities, Kozan hopes to establish the website as an international medical resource.

“I have a liaison, so far, in Australia and the United Kingdom,” he explained. “I would really like to see it become the Wikipedia of practice exam questions, but along with that, I want to make it a legitimate medical resource.”

Completely run by students, Kozan developed the website based on an existing exam question bank called Germ Zappers, which is used as a medical learning tool in a first-year infectious disease course. However, he wasn’t content with its existing features, as he felt that there were additional features that could be added to benefit medical students.

“I wanted to be able to discuss the question, to have explanations for each one. I wanted be able submit my own questions because I find writing material for myself and for others to quiz ourselves is a great way to learn,” Kozan explained.

Dr David Rayner, the U of A’s associate dean of undergraduate medical education, is among one of several professors who have used QuizMD as a learning resource for the purposes of their course. While Rayner has only logged onto the website once or twice to upload questions, he believes that QuizMD is a great addition to the available learning tools for medical students.

“Some of our students were really thinking outside the box when they put this together,” Rayner said. “The obvious benefit is that it gives you practice questions that you can use as a measure of your learning. The less obvious thing is that writing a good exam question takes considerable depth of knowledge. It’s actually quite difficult to write a decent exam question, so if students are putting questions together, then that’s real depth learning. It means that they have to know the material pretty well.”

While Kozan views the rapidity at which the medical resource is changing as an important advantage, there’s concern that some of the user-submitted content may be of subpar quality. To combat this, he has designed a system where peers are able to comment on questions to identify inaccuracies and inconsistencies in content or to praise those that are beneficial and particularly well written. In addition, Kozan has added a voting system where users can acclaim questions they found helpful. Through this peer-evaluation process, students learn how to improve questions and develop a greater grasp on the course content, while allowing for maintenance of high quality material.

“[A peer-evaluation system] is what you need to have. You’ve got to improve the questions by successive approximations. You’ve got to edit them and keep refining them, and eventually, you’ll get a good one,” Rayner commented.

With increases in popularity with medical students, Kozan finds that more students are becoming involved with QuizMD through the creation of over a dozen satellite sites. In addition, preceptors are beginning to work in concert with these students to review the material for accuracy and validity.

“It’s good for both parties. For [the student], it’s a way to interact with preceptors in the field, which could precipitate presentations and publications. It’s a great way to get noticed,” Kozan said. “For the preceptor, who may be involved in medical education, it may allow for them to advance their career.”

Despite these evident advantages, Kozan still has various future improvements planned. He hopes to expand the user base to encompass not only students from the U of A but those from every university. He has already started to achieve this goal with presentations scheduled at two conferences: those of the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC) and the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP).

“Really, the sky’s the limit in terms of where Daniel wants to take QuizMD,” explained Aaron Knox, President of the U of A’s Medical Students’ Association. “There are a lot of different types of online learning resources that could be incorporated into that. It has a lot of potential to be an amazing learning tool for medical students.”