What is Good Assessment?

1. What is Good Assessment? Zubair Amin Associate Professor National University of Singapore paeza@nus.edu.sg

2. “A Good Assessment is Fit for Purpose Assessment What are those purpose or purposes? Who are the potential users of the information gained from the assessment? What are the recommended use of assessment information? What are the intended and unintended consequences of assessment?

3. Stated Purposes for an Assessment To evaluate candidate’s competency in clinical medicine required for the practice To provide feedback to the medical schools about their curricular strengths and weakness To provide feedback to individual student about their strengths and weakness

4. Unstated Purposes of an Assessment To rank students and medical schools according to the performance in the examination To determine the incentives of the medical schools, departments, and teachers To determine comparative effectiveness different methods of educational interventions

5. Statements of Limitations of the Examination • Seldom discussed and rarely stated • “The number of question in this examination is not sufficiently large enough to rank students.” • “This examination does not test candidate’s ability in practical procedures.” • “The expected margin of error in this examination is +/- 2.5”

6. Unintended Consequences of Assessment • Use of examination for wrong purposes • Ranking of medical students for future career choice • Ranking of medical schools • Negative influence of medical schools’ curriculum • Heavy focus on knowledge • Barrier to change in medical schools

7. The ‘law’ of educational cause and effect states that: for every evaluative action, there is an equal (or greater) (and sometimes opposite) educational reaction. Schuwirth, L.W.T. (2001) General Concerns About Assessment.

8. Home Grown Examinations Potential Benefits Faculty development Contextual relevance Long term stability Collaboration Challenges • Takes time and resources to develop a robust system

9. Imported Examinations Availability of resources Quicker time to implement Benchmarking with other international centers Standardization

10. Overt Standardization • Encourages memorization if recall of knowledge is the predominant cognitive tasks • Deemphasizes student achievement goals that are harder to measure • Self-directed learning • Professionalism • Discourages innovations • Curriculum is tied to the assessment • Encourages status quo

11. There is probably more bad practice and ignorance of significant issues in the area of assessment than in any other aspect of higher education. Boud, 1995

12. ..… this would not be so bad if it were not for the fact that the effects of bad practice are far more potent than they are for any aspect of teaching. Students can, with difficulty, escape from the effects of poor teaching, they cannot (by definition, if they want to graduate) escape from the effects of poor assessment. Boud, 1995

13. “ Assessment Drives Student Learning.” George E Miller “Assessment Drives Learning the Way You Want.”