Early development of an electronic medical educational assessment

Early development of an electronic medical educational assessment

Large businesses frequently use Business Intelligence Software to make strategic decisions. Extensive analyses can be conducted looking at multiple facets across the business model. Results can be analyzed looking specifically at products, divisions, personnel, management etc. The ability to look at the information in many different ways and to drill down on certain facets is enormously powerful. If similar software programs were used extensively in medical education more effective decision making could be implemented in terms of pedagogy, curriculum revision, faculty assignments and potentially individual student learning and faculty teaching targets. The University Of New England School Of Rural Medicine (UNESRM) is using this philosophy to try to develop an Electronic Medical Educational Assessment Enterprise Solution (EMEAES). By using a combination of commercial software and programs developed in house we can now effectively and efficiently assess many aspects of medical students’ performance and the impact of teaching in the curriculum. The assessments include interactive questions ( pre and post) PowerPoint lectures, Problem Based Learning (PBL) sessions, E OSCEs ( Electronic Objective Structured Clinical Examinations) and on line MCQs ( Multiple Choice Questions). It is essential to do a full risk analysis prior to implementing any new software assessment program, especially proprietary, in - house developments. For example, prior to implementing the University of New England School of Rural Medicine EOSCEs a full risk assessment profile was performed. This included features such as student identification ( Photo and student number used for double identification), tutor identification (signature), unauthorized access, incomplete fields, system failures and system stability. Another relatively inexpensive program, TurningPoint , is an audience response system can be used to facilitate interactive audience participation anywhere in the world provided there is internet access. While it can be used with clickers it is now available on IPads and smart phones. The questions are embedded in a PowerPoint presentation and the responses can be downloaded and transferred to a spreadsheet program for analysis. A simple electronic program was developed in house to assess the skills lab performance of first and second year medical students undergoing an introduction to ultrasound course. The PBL assessments are also done electronically and include not only tutors assessment of medical students but also students’ assessment of the tutors.