Abstract: The contextualization of exam questions refers to setting questions in the real situations, making the assessment of knowledge in the process of problem solving.Since 2012, scenario-based questions have been introduced into the final examinations of neurobiology of undergraduates in the department of Neurobiology in the school of Basic Medical Sciences of Peking University. Here, we summarized the skills used in writing the scenario-based questions in the final examination papers of neurobiology. Taking the final examination paper in 2016 as an example, we analyzed the correlation between the scenario-based questions and the quality of the examination paper. The results showed that the difficulty coefficient of scenario-based single-choice questions is decreased as compared to that of non-scenario based single-choice questions, while the discrimination coefficient is enhanced. In addition, there is a positive correlation between the score of scenario-based questions and the final score of the examination paper. Therefore, introducing scenario-based questions can increase the discrimination coefficient of the examination paper and helps to evaluate students' capacity of learning and doing.

Key words: Scenario-based questions, Neurobiology, Quality of the examination paper, Difficulty, Differentiation