Presented By: Esther Dale, University of Minnesota Medical School

Purpose 
Test construction is essential for evaluating competency in medical education, yet instructors often create ad-hoc exams due to time, resources, and expertise constraints. This can lead to exams with questionable content validity, impacting the accurate assessment of curriculum robustness, learner competence, and progression decisions. Medical students advocating for fair exams call for tests constructively aligned with learning outcomes and demonstrate content validity. Constructive alignment ensures that teaching and assessment methods correspond with intended learning outcomes, while content validity refers to the extent to which an exam represents the subject matter. A fair exam requires clear instructional objectives, cognitive complexity based on Bloom's Taxonomy, and appropriate weighting. Tests that effectively represent and assess the taught content have higher content validity. Since medical courses vary widely, faculty development in medical schools does not address specific content or content sampling. This presentation involves five physiologists and two assessment specialists who will discuss test blueprints within the physiology domain, helping the audience understand their structure and role in enhancing content validity. 

Methods 
The presentation will showcase test blueprints from five physiology professors, highlighting their similarities and differences. Each blueprint will outline learning objectives, cognitive complexity levels, and weightings. Participants will explore various dimensions to assess concept coverage within learning objectives, emphasizing dimensions crucial for medical education and integrating basic science with clinical content. 

Results 
We present samples from five medical schools, demonstrating exam blueprinting to overcome common challenges. These case studies will illustrate different blueprinting approaches, dimensions used, improvements in content validity, challenges faced, solutions implemented, and innovative practices resulting from assessment blueprinting. 

Conclusions 
Crafting a test blueprint along selected dimensions is key to assessing learner competence in medical school courses, ensuring that tests accurately reflect basic science and clinical knowledge.