Assessment in Medical Education: Evolving trends

Assessment is an important part of the medical education. It influences learning of the students. Traditionally, assessment has been used to measure the achievements of students for certification. Now is increasing trend to stress on formative assessment to improve learning. Miller’s Pyramid provides a good conceptual model to assess clinical competence by providing tiered levels of assessment. Assessment should be valid, reliable, acceptable, feasible and have positive educational impact. All validity is construct validity. There is much debate on validity and reliability but an assessment which is low on one can still be useful by virtue of its being high on other. Combination of tools is preferred to get a composite picture of student’s attainment. Assessment of knowledge is by written assessment. The tests and questions should be contextual and concentrate on assessment of application of knowledge. Assessment of clinical skills is done by traditional methods such as long and short cases and newer methods such as mini-clinical evaluation exercises, objective structured clinical examinations, case-based discussion and portfolios. Training of faculty members is important to improve quality of assessment