Series Description

Innovations in health care education require the simultaneous development of creative new approaches to student assessment.  This IAMSE webcast seminar series will explore these issues and provide several examples of how schools are evolving with assessment approaches.  Many, if not most, contemporary health science curricula are exploring the integrated learning of multiple basic science disciplines in the clinical and social contexts of patient care.  These teaching and learning approaches require new and creative assessment tools to monitor student progress.  Faculty training to develop and implement these changes is also critical since constructing high quality, reliable assessment tools is a learned skill.  Assessment includes formative feedback to students as an effective learning activity, and this is increasingly incorporated into modern curricula.  Students are also being taught life-long learning skills and are expected to be independent learners.  Yet how can faculty or accreditation agencies be assured of progress towards continued professional growth and competency?  As post-curricular, graduate medical educational programs change to more benchmark approaches to measure competency, how will this impact the approaches to learning and assessment in medical and other health science curricula?  These and other issues will be the focus of our five seminars.

Webinar Description

The recent trend in competency based undergraduate medical education provides the opportunity for individualized teaching and learning and the development of innovatively integrated curricula.  When this framework is coupled with dynamic competency based multimodal learner assessments it becomes structurally sound and transferable.  Accomplishing this however, is not an easy task.  Ensuring that learner assessments of knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors are valid and faculty are reliable in their assessments requires diligence and planning.  

As undergraduate medical education curricula change assessment is often thought of in isolation.  This commonly results in mal-alignment in the curriculum and dissonance among learners and educators alike.  Creating an assessment framework alongside competency and curriculum development allows for a product that is seen as seamless and integrated by the learner.  Creating a structure that supports individualized assessment can seem daunting, however it does not need to be.  Practical step-wise development of an individualized assessment paradigm over time allows for both faculty and students to adjust and mature alongside the educational program.  Clear connections between competencies, curricular content and assessment establishes confidence for both faculty and learners as well as those who receive our learners in the next phase of their education.

Target Audience

DMU faculty and staff.

Speaker(s)

Daniel M. Clinchot