The continual assessment of confidence or knowledge with hidden MCQ?

This short paper reports on a recent study that has attempted to join together continual MCQ assessment and also the use of confidence testing utilizing hidden MCQ. Through the use of a continual assessment process of four tests of increasing magnitude with regard to the overall marks awarded, a method has been developed of identifying questions that are answered incorrectly. The questions that have been ‘most incorrectly answered’ have been fed into the subsequent tests. In order to identify which questions are the ‘poorest’ with regard to students getting them correct, a method is introduced that grades the questions making use of a confidence weighting factor.