Creating practice test items with Generative AI: A student-faculty collaborative approach

Description of the Problem: Educational delivery has been greatly impacted by the recent advancements in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) and the expected further exponential advances within the field. While many studies have discussed the impact of GAI, it is commonly framed as either how faculty can make GAI work for them or how to “GAI-proof” educational assessment. A less considered option would be to partner with students on GAI use to augment their studying. The Innovation: Students partnered with the course instructor to design and evaluate GAI-powered question sets to supplement the course material in a first-year pharmacy class of both on-campus and distance pathway students (n=54). The primary objective was to design a potential mechanism to openly collaborate with students in using GAI. Outcomes measured included question utilization, student perceptions of using the question sets, accuracy of the questions, and cost/time to create the question sets. Critical Analysis: The student and faculty collaborative review questions were positively rated by the students and were feasible to design and implement, at no expense and of minimal time to create. Additionally, only 3 out of 425 questions were found to be incorrect upon faculty review. Of the 50 students who completed the author-developed survey, over 90% used the GAI question sets, perceived them to be helpful and perceived that they enhanced their learning; and 70% of students agreed that a professor should review GAI material before it is used. These findings suggest that a student-faculty partnership in the use of GAI may be one way to develop practice test items in pharmacy education, while addressing common concerns about GAI use, implementation, and accuracy. Next Steps: Future steps include evaluating the success of these question sets in comparison to traditionally made questions as well as initiating student-faculty collaboration in other uses of GAI in pharmacy education.