At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

With the ever growing expansion of medical knowledge, there is increasing recognition that a physician simply cannot know all there is to know. This realization has led to increasing emphasis on teaching students how to apply knowledge and think critically. Traditional testing methods tend to emphasize recall due to ease of administration, construction and scoring. To match what is taught with what is assessed, alternative testing forms that promote application of knowledge are preferred. Open-ended exam questions are one such testing form, which, when constructed well, can test higher level cognitive skills such as application and evaluation of knowledge. Open-ended exam questions also give insight into students'written communication skills. At the University of California San Francisco, we recently converted all summative exams for the foundational science blocks in the School of Medicine curriculum to open-ended questions. With faculty development this has led to high quality exam questions and rubrics.  

 

In this practical, hands-on workshop, participants will learn:

The goal of this workshop is to empower medical educators with the skills and tools to develop alternative methods of assessment that go beyond the traditional multiple-choice exam questions. We will hand out worksheets and tips to ensure feasibility of grading using rubrics. This workshop may also spark discussions around the role of assessment in the information era and on best practices for feedback