Abstract
Background
• The School of Pharmacy will add into its BPharm curriculum an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in the 4th year as a cumulative examination before graduation, starting in May 2020.
• This OSCE is a practical examination that focuses on assessing the students’ knowledge, competency, skills and professional attitude in a series of test stations.
• At each station, the student is given a clinical case scenario, and then gives a short presentation to an examiner, followed by an interactive discussion with following up questions.
• A key objective of the OSCE is to allow the students to demonstrate, and receive feedback on, their practical and clinical skills.
Preliminary Challenges Identified
• It was planned to give students sufficient face-to-face practice before the examination in May, however these are now cancelled due to COVID-19 outbreak.
• Some of our teachers and external examiners may need to be quarantined during May, and so cannot come on-site for the assessment. Therefore, the planned OSCE must be revised and online alternative be implemented.
• Other secondary challenges are:
- Difficulty to give individual feedback.
- Ensuring objectivity and consistency across examiners.
- Inability of reassessment if the student ask for an appeal of the examination scores.
Project Objectives The project aims to
1) Use Zoom and blackboard to conduct practice sessions with student prior to OSCE;
2) Record all students’ presentations and discussions using the new Zoom platform;
3) Organize and make available these recording for student feedback and (re-)assessment, if necessary;
4) Provide data for analyzing the scoring pattern of individual examiners to ensure objectivity, reliability and consistency among examiners, and validating the adequacy of assessment checklists;
5) Create learning and demonstration materials for future students.
Expected Benefits • Students will have practical sessions before the OSCE in May to better prepare for it.
• Student may review their own performance and receive detailed, individualized feedback. This in turn will enhance their learning, knowledge, skills and attitude.
• The objectivity, reliability and validity of the examination assessment may be further improved.
• A collection of new demonstration and learning materials will be available for future students, so that they can better prepare for the OSCE, provide comments on their learning needs and be engaged in curriculum design.
Brief write-up
Project objectives
The primary objective of the project is to conduct an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) with both face-to-face and online/remote assessment. Secondarily, we aim to provide training materials and individual feedback to students with the help with Zoom, produce preparation materials for future students and assess test validity based on duplicate assessments with recording.
Activities, process and outcomes
• Conducted mixed-mode OSCE, provided feedback, conduct exit survey
• Prepared teaching and demonstration videos for future students
• Duplicate scoring to evaluate assessment reliability and validity
• Presentation in CUHK Teaching and Learning Innovation Expo 2021
Deliverables and evaluation
• 21 students completed the OSCE, all given feedback, 17 completed exit survey
• 3 teaching and demonstration videos were made available on Blackboard for future students
• 28 independent duplicate score, which revealed satisfactory agreement between assessors
• 2 abstracts were submitted for presentation in CUHK Teaching and Learning Innovation Expo 2021
Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices
• Both abstracts were accepted, including 1 oral presentation and 1 poster presentation
• The poster was selected for silver award on educational impact
Impact on teaching and learning
The School has gained valuable experience in organizing the mixed-mode OSCE. The assessment evaluation helped us further optimize the assessment checklists. The OSCE helped the students better prepare for their internship training and identify their area of further development. In summary, the project has informed improvement in the Programme’s curriculum and the School’s inaugural OSCE held in May 2021.
