Assessing the Benefit of Student Self-Generated Multiple-Choice Questions on Examination Performance

Prior non-accounting research has generally concluded that students obtain performance benefits from self-generating MCQs. We examine accounting students completing an extra-credit assignment to self-generate MCQs and its association with examination performance gains. Using students from a large public and small/medium sized private university, across multiple courses and semesters, we find that while students completing the assignment had significantly greater examination gains than those not completing the assignment, they did not outperform students in the same courses not offered the assignment. We find that these results hold across students of all initial performance quartiles. Our results suggest that prior educational research may overestimate the benefits of MCQ self-generation by not performing appropriate control group comparisons. We provide evidence that voluntary self-generation of MCQs may be a way to identify students seeking to improve their course performance, but in of itself it may not be an effective method to improve student performance on MCQ examinations. Our study contributes to the general education literature by presenting a more robust evaluation of the benefit of student self-generation of MCQs, and to the accounting education literature by being the first study utilizing accounting students to assess the potential benefit of student MCQ self-generation.