In recent years an increasing focus has been placed on the development of students’ skills of critical thinking, problem solving and independent learning, throughout their time at university. There is an increasing shift towards incorporating activities which promote students’ active engagement with course materials – with the intention of promoting a deeper understanding of their chosen subject. Many tools and techniques are available that facilitate students’ transition from the passive recipient of knowledge, to a central, active actor in the learning process. One such tool, PeerWise, is an online, free to use application where students are encouraged to write multiple choice questions for their peers to answer, resulting in a bank of questions for students to test their knowledge and understanding. Students are given opportunities to give feedback to question authors on the quality of the question, in the form of a numerical rating or a qualitative comment, which provides further scope for students to engage in discussion about the question. It is hypothesised that actively engaging with course material will promote a deeper understanding of its content and will develop students’ skills of problem solving and critical thinking. The research in this thesis explores the relationship between engagement with PeerWise and performance in end of course examinations in six courses (physics, chemistry and biology), across three academic years within three research intensive UK universities. This work aims to unpick the nature of student interactions on PeerWise, and the extent to which engagement with each activity on the system is associated with attainment, when controlling for a student’s prior ability and other relevant factors such as their gender. Student views on engaging with the system have also been gathered to understand the degree to which students find PeerWise useful to their learning, and the ways in which they interact with the platform. Although the results paint a complex picture of the relationship between PeerWise use and attainment, in most courses, and for most ability levels, students who engage to a higher level with PeerWise achieve a higher exam score than their lower engaging peers. There is also often a significant, positive correlation between engaging with PeerWise and end of course exam score which persists, even when controlling for a student’s prior ability. Although it would seem to be that answering questions and writing high quality feedback is more often associated with attainment than writing questions and receiving feedback, the results suggest that engagement across all activities is most beneficial to students – indicating that overall engagement with the task is key to student learning.

Active learning has been suggested to be more effective than traditional learning in terms of exam results and time spent on the course material, making it an attractive alternative to the traditional lectures. One way of practicing active learning is through active learnersourcing, a method of learning that also generates material that contributes to further learning. Learnersourcing can be practiced by generating multiple choice questions (MCQs) related to the course material. However, generating useful and high-quality MCQs is challenging for students, especially since the available digital systems developed for this purpose have great issues in terms of user-friendliness and their outdated visual design. Two of these systems are RiPPLE and PeerWise. When developing a platform designed for generating MCQs for learning, there are general and specific guidelines that can be followed: Nielsen’s 10 heuristics for a good user interface/user experience, and 10 principles for a good MCQ. In this thesis, a new system was developed where these guidelines were applied, as an attempt to investigate if the user experience can be improved compared to the currently available interfaces RiPPLE and PeerWise. The project was named MyCleverQuestion. A user test was conducted, in which the three systems’ interfaces for creating and submitting a question were compared and graded. The results shows that the users had the best experience when using MyCleverQuestion. 83.3% of the users said they would use MyCleverQuestion again, stressing the importance of both a good user interface and user experience. / Aktivt lärande har visat sig vara effektivare än traditionellt lärande i avseende till tentamensresultat och tid studenter spenderar på kursmaterialet, och är således ett attraktivt alternativ till de traditionella föreläsningarna. Ett sätt att utöva aktivt lärande är genom att skapa flervalsfrågor kopplade till kursmaterialet. Denna metod kallas aktiv learnersourcing och gör att man genom lärandet även bidrar med material som kan användas för vidare lärande. Det är dock svårt för studenter att skapa högkvalitativa och användbara flervalsfrågor med hjälp av de digitala system som utvecklats för detta syfte, då deras användarvänlighet är bristande och visuella utformning är föråldrade. RiPPLE och PeerWise är två system utvecklade för att skapa flervalsfrågor i utbildningssyfte, och har båda användarvänlighetsproblem. Det finns särskilda riktlinjer som kan följas för att utveckla ett system där studenter kan generera flervalsfrågor för att utöva aktivt lärande. I denna uppsats har både generella och specifika riktlinjer använts: 10 generella heuristiska principer för att skapa en bra användarupplevelse och användargränssnitt, samt 10 principer för att skapa en bra flervalsfrågas, för att slutligen undersöka om användarupplevelsen kan förbättras jämfört med RiPPLE och PeerWise. Namnet som valdes för projektet var MyCleverQuestion. En användarundersökning genomfördes, där gränssnittet för att skapa en fråga för varje system utvärderades. Resultatet visar att gränssnittet med bäst användarupplevelse är MyCleverQuestion. 83,3% av användarna angav att de skulle använda MyCleverQuestion igen, vilket bevisar vikten av ett bra gränssnitt.