Utilising assessment as a drive for changing teaching
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The release in 2001 of the National Curricula Guidelines by the Ministry of Education of Brazil prompted medical colleges to increase student training in clinical skills as well as learning of cognitive content. At our institution, new strategies for student learning and assessment are being introduced in order to conform to the new guidelines. As faculty staff and clinical teachers are usually resistant to changes in teaching, but sensitive to assessment issues, we decided to implement an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) in the pneumology module as a strategy through which to adapt curriculum and teaching methods to the new guidelines. The OSCE planning, which demanded the definition of the skills to be assessed, was aligned to the revision of educational objectives. This led to the redefinition of teaching methods and to the development of new instructional materials. Complementary actions involved informing the institution, establishing the team and retraining the instructors (n = 10) for both assessment and teaching. The strategy was completed with the implementation of structured examinations for two classes (n = 36 and n = 37 students). Each test comprised six stations (three with simulated patients [SPs]) covering the most relevant clinical skills. After the examination students were given feedback on their performances, which had been recorded on video. Analysis of overall examination results led to the identification and subsequent correction of teaching deficiencies in the module. At the end of the module, after the examination, students completed structured questionnaires evaluating both the module and the OSCE. The examination was also evaluated by instructors and SPs. The reshaped module was considered to be good or excellent by 57% of the students in terms of its achievement of the teaching goals. The OSCE was considered to be an appropriate assessment method by 79% of students; 88% felt that the content and tasks addressed in the assessment were aligned with the material that had been taught. The instructors regarded the examination as feasible and appropriate in terms of the planning, location and resources used. The SPs found that the training was easy and, although they complained about the repetition of exhaustive work, expressed the belief that they had contributed to student learning. We concluded that the introduction of OSCEs in the pneumology module of the medical curriculum at our institution is feasible and effective as a tool for skills assessment and that it can be seen as positive by students, instructors and SPs. The strategy of examination implementation was important because it allowed us to review both content and teaching methods and to train teachers in assessment. Maintenance of this project may enable us to continue a more accurate evaluation of its influence on student performance of clinical skills in pneumology and to extend this approach to other modules in the medical course. Notwithstanding the limitations of our work, this initiative indicates that curriculum and teaching methods can be effectively improved by using modifications in assessment as a driving force.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.043 | 0.091 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.013 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".