With the question bank, the NVON aims to offer biology teachers an efficient and accessible alternative to textbook tests.
‘Testing doesn’t always get the highest priority, even though we assess our pupils on it. It’s not seen as particularly exciting. In practice, you quickly reach for an old test, or simply use the textbook test. But it’s important that teachers have more material at their disposal for their regular school examination tests’, says Klaas Wieringa, a biology teacher at Greijdanus in Zwolle. Wieringa spends one day a week at the Dutch Association for Science Education (NVON), where he is working on an accessible biology question bank.
Disappearing
As a newly qualified biology teacher, Wieringa met Henk Weerdestein and Jan Willem Noordenbos at a NIBI conference in 2006; they were developing an item bank of biology test questions. ‘René Westra also joined them, and together they collected an enormous amount of material for the question bank. They translated Scandinavian tests, for example. With a subscription through the NVON, teachers could make use of the item bank.’ The item bank was originally created using the digital testing programme Wintoets, which was in use until 2023. The item bank was at risk of being lost due to the discontinuation of this and other software. At that point it contained twenty thousand test questions. Wieringa was alerted to this by Allard Bijlsma, the original owner of Wintoets, and in 2023 began converting and further developing the item bank.
Niek Vermeulen, a vmbo biology teacher at Zuidwestercollege in Ossendrecht, has long used the item bank with his department. ‘It’s especially useful during test weeks, when we’re examining a lot of material. With the item bank it’s very easy to pick a topic.’ For Vermeulen, the bank is a good way to avoid being tied to textbook tests. ‘The metadata makes it easy to put together a test based on the exam. You can quickly look at the theme and the objectives of a question.’
Accessible
Wieringa: ‘Our goal was to make the bank widely accessible, regardless of the platform colleagues are working with. We didn’t want to risk tying ourselves to a single platform that could disappear through bankruptcy or a takeover.’ A colleague at Kennisnet pointed them towards Wikiwijs. ‘Through the Impuls Open Leermaterialen initiative in Wikiwijs, many lessons are already on Wikiwijs; a question bank fitted in well with that.’ Wieringa, Bijlsma, and the Kennisnet programmers spent a long time on the technical development of the question bank. ‘The item bank used to consist of nine large collections containing thousands of questions. But Wikiwijs works with tests rather than individual items, so we divided the material into more than 1,900 tests.’ The item bank has been available online at kn.nu/qti-nvon since 14 October. Previously, it was not possible to export the metadata associated with the tests – the information about learning objectives, topic, and question type – to one’s own testing programme. Through the NVON’s collaboration with Cito, all tests are now available in the export format QTI 3.0. ‘As a result, each question carries a number of labels: what level it is, what type of question it is, what the topic is, and so on.’ In the future, Wieringa hopes that the tests can be imported directly into all digital testing programmes. ‘Until then, teachers can also use the material in the question bank as a practice test. You can select a test and share it with your pupils as a link.’
Practising
Wieringa is not worried about pupils having already found potential tests on the internet. ‘As long as there are enough questions and tests, that’s not a problem. A pupil who has practised all the questions has also learnt enough. At the moment, old exam questions are regularly included in tests anyway, so a pupil occasionally gets lucky.’ To fund the whole endeavour, the NVON could develop ‘validated tests’ and make these available to members, Wieringa thinks. He hopes that more biology colleagues will join in to help develop the test material further. ‘Textbook tests are practical, but somewhat limited. In bilingual education they sometimes turn out to be translated too literally and end up being incorrect.’ In February, Wieringa and a number of colleagues from bilingual education will set to work developing English-language tests for the question bank. He would also like to see teachers who are approaching retirement make their old tests available in the question bank.
‘It would be wonderful if, in two years’ time, newly qualified biology teachers were no longer condemned to the textbook test, but could browse freely through the question bank.’ As a complement to the question bank, Wieringa and his colleagues are also gathering material for an image bank, which will be made available to NVON members. ‘That way, colleagues who need an illustration of the carbon cycle or the circulatory system can easily find a rights-free image for their teaching materials or tests.’ Wieringa wants to encourage teachers who have such images in their own possession to share them.
The work is far from over for Wieringa. Some of the material in the question bank is out of date and in need of improvement. ‘Certain areas, such as genetics, are not yet sufficiently covered.’ Wieringa hopes that users will contact him with feedback and suggestions to raise the profile of the question bank. His contact details can be found at https:// nvon.nl/toetsenbank-biologie-en-tto.
ILLUSTRATION ANNEMARIE ROOS