Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40184548›Full record

ArticleJMIR formative research2025

Using a Hybrid of AI and Template-Based Method in Automatic Item Generation to Create Multiple-Choice Questions in Medical Education: Hybrid AIG.

Yavuz Selim Kıyak, Andrzej A Kononowicz

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Article in JMIR formative research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

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0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed.

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Yavuz Selim KıyakDepartment of Medical Education and Informatics, Faculty of Medicine, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey.ORCID 0000-0002-5026-3234
Andrzej A KononowiczDepartment of Bioinformatics and Telemedicine, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Medyczna Str 7, Kraków, 30-688, Poland, 48 12 3476908.ORCID 0000-0003-2956-2093

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Background: Template-based automatic item generation (AIG) is more efficient than traditional item writing but it still heavily relies on expert effort in model development. While nontemplate-based AIG, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), offers efficiency, it faces accuracy challenges. Medical education, a field that relies heavily on both formative and summative assessments with multiple choice questions, is in dire need of AI-based support for the efficient automatic generation of items. Objective: We aimed to propose a hybrid AIG to demonstrate whether it is possible to generate item templates using AI in the field of medical education. Methods: This is a mixed-methods methodological study with proof-of-concept elements. We propose the hybrid AIG method as a structured series of interactions between a human subject matter expert and AI, designed as a collaborative authoring effort. The method leverages AI to generate item models (templates) and cognitive models to combine the advantages of the two AIG approaches. To demonstrate how to create item models using hybrid AIG, we used 2 medical multiple-choice questions: one on respiratory infections in adults and another on acute allergic reactions in the pediatric population. Results: The hybrid AIG method we propose consists of 7 steps. The first 5 steps are performed by an expert in a customized AI environment. These involve providing a parent item, identifying elements for manipulation, selecting options and assigning values to elements, and generating the cognitive model. After a final expert review (Step 6), the content in the template can be used for item generation through a traditional (non-AI) software (Step 7). We showed that AI is capable of generating item templates for AIG under the control of a human expert in only 10 minutes. Leveraging AI in template development made it less challenging. Conclusions: The hybrid AIG method transcends the traditional template-based approach by marrying the "art" that comes from AI as a "black box" with the "science" of algorithmic generation under the oversight of expert as a "marriage registrar". It does not only capitalize on the strengths of both approaches but also mitigates their weaknesses, offering a human-AI collaboration to increase efficiency in medical education.

Indexed as

Artificial IntelligenceEducational MeasurementEducation, MedicalAdultHumansAIalgorithmartificial intelligenceautomatic item generationChatGPTexperthuman-AIhuman-AI collaborationhybridhybrid AIGlarge language modelsmedical educationmixed-methodmultiple-choicemultiple-choice questiontemplate-based method

Identifiers

PMID40184548
PMCPMC11990652

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.