Some input for a new study product

[DD214_DOC]

Hey guys,

This may or may not be the right forum for this -- I don't know. I stumbled across something and have undertaken a summer project and wanted some input from you guys.

As far as I know, no practice exam/question bank thingy exists for basic science students. I know people use Qbank and Kaplan, but those are for boards; you probably don't want to do board questions until you're ready to study for boards.

I have been writing practice questions for each subject/exam the past two terms. It looks that I will amass a huge bank of basic science questions in excess of 6,000 questions. (I do about 500 per exam) for each subject, including clinical skills and OMM. I decided it's too much work to browse through a DOC file and started writing an exam engine in C#. I wanted to know what features you guys thought should be included, because I may end up selling it (at a reasonable student price) in a couple years.

I want to know 1) what features you guys think are important and 2) what pricing you think is fair.

So far, I have decided the program should have two modes -- one mode that gives you the right answer immediately and guides you through the questions, and another mode that draws X random questions from the subject bank and basically gives you a mock exam, with details at the end. I decided to not include a "board study" mode than throws all subjects into one database because I believe board study stuff is already adequately covered.

For pricing, I am thinking $25 for the software engine that includes the gross anatomy question bank. Additional subject banks (embryo, biochem, OMM, PCS, etc) will be priced on the question content, not to exceed $9. (I figure $5 for banks less than 500 or something like that)

I appreciate your input. I'm not trying to sell it, just want some suggestions.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[DragonWell]

I think this is a great idea - sign me up today. I find doing questions a very useful way to sharpen my understanding of the material, and it is challenging to find "good" questions. The pretest books just don't cut it...

Some suggestions :

-IMHO, a good question is only as good as it's answer. The best questions have really good explanations of not only why a particular answer is right, but also the thought process you should have gone through to get there, as well as the thought process to rule out the incorrect answers. High yield facts and mnemonics are also welcome in answer explanations.

-Questions should be able to be tailored to very specific subjects. For example, I took a test today which covered purine degradation. It would be nice to have questions divided into subjects, or even to be able to do a keyword search, so you wouldn't have to search through all of nitrogen metabolism to ID the questions you need.

-Questions should be as exam-like as possible - ie specific and challenging.

-Questions should reinforce important concepts through repetition. Having multiple questions test the same concept in slightly different ways is a great way to reinforce your learning and helps make doing questions a true learning tool, as opposed to simply a way of measuring your preparedness.

-The best question sources I have found are the review questions books, esp the gross anatomy. This book really exemplifies the above points.

Keep in touch and let me know how it's going!