Reflections on Module 6 Assessment in course development doc

Reflections on Course Development: Assessment Module 6


Assessment clearly has a vital role in driving e-learning course design, but I think it is also quite problematic. Although van der Vleuten and Schuwirth (2005) are often quoted as saying assessment drives learning in fact assessment may simply drive learning for assessment, (MacLachlan 2006) This makes the issue of ensuring that assessment is authentic as defined by Wiggins in 1999 about teacher education even more vital. He says that all assessment should be about completing tasks that learners are actually training to do, and never about parts of tasks.
If assessment is checking that learners “know” subject matter that is only loosely relevant to their context, then knowledge without context may be what we get.


Positives and Negatives
Two issues that I think are problematic in e-learning (and why it can never fully replace F2F learning for clinical education) are the areas of interactions with others and attitudes. How does skill with electronic methods of communication correlate with abilities to interact with staff and patients? I don’t know, and haven’t found much which helps me know.

While there are some methods of assessment which attempt to assess complex clinical reasoning, eg (Sibert, Darmoni et al. 2005)it is clear that complex human-to-human activities can be difficult to assess online. This is not to say that they cannot be assessed: for example the fact that there are many on-line therapists offering support to people with mental health problems and developing guidelines to decide whether patients can benefit from these methods (eg http://www.ismho.org) suggests that feasibility of at least some aspects of assessment.

This is an are which is far from resolved, however and I like Robyn’s analogy of the Emperor’s new clothes: so much written, so little well-validated.

I am involved in psychiatry exams which attempt to assess clinical skills with patients, and know first hand how difficult it can be. Even in a face-to-face setting. There is a bit of literature:a review of peer assessment models showed that there was lots of promise but little validation (that sounds familiar!!) (Evans, Elwyn et al. 2004). I guess the answer still lies in regarding on-line learning as a part but not as the whole: drawing out the things that can be assessed online and not attempting to do the things that can’t. I would once have said that clinical reasoning could not be taught on-line but now I can see that it can, so perhaps we will find ways which allow us to extend what we can do.


References
Evans, R., G. Elwyn, et al. (2004). "Review of instruments for peer assessment of physicians." BMJ 328(7450): 1240-.
Sibert, L., S. Darmoni, et al. (2005). "Online clinical reasoning assessment with the Script Concordance test: a feasibility study." BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 5(1): 18.
Wiggins, Grant (1990). The case for authentic assessment. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 2(2). Retrieved May 7, 2007 from http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=2