Status Quo of Progress Testing in Veterinary Medical Education and Lessons Learned

Abstract

Progress testing is an assessment tool for longitudinal measurement of increase in knowledge of a specific group, e.g., students, which is well-known in medical education. This article gives an overview of progress testing in veterinary education with a focus on the progress test of the German-speaking countries. The "progress test veterinary medicine" (PTT) was developed in 2013 as part of a project by the Competence Centre for E-Learning, Didactics and Educational Research in Veterinary Medicine-a project cooperation of all German-speaking institutes for veterinary medicine in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. After the end of the project, the PTT was still continued at six locations, at each of the five German schools for veterinary medicine and additionally in Austria. Further changes to the PTT platform and the analysis were carried out to optimize the PTT for continuing to offer the test from 2017 to 2019. The PTT is an interdisciplinary, formative electronic online test. It is taken annually and is composed of 136 multiple-choice single best answer questions. In addition, a "don't know" option is given. The content of the PTT refers to the day 1 competencies described by the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education. The platform Q-Exam ® Institutions (IQuL GmbH, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany) is used for creating and administrating the PTT questions, the review processes and organizing of the online question database. After compiling the test by means of a blueprint, the PTT file is made available at every location. After the last PTT in 2018, the link to an evaluation was sent to the students from four out of these six partner Universities. The 450 analyzed questionnaires showed that the students mainly use the PTT to compare their individual results with those of fellow students in the respective semester. To conclude our study, a checklist with our main findings for implementing progress testing was created.

Avaliação longitudinal de estudantes de medicina: o teste de progresso é apropriado?

“…A elaboração de testes com questões de múltipla escolha bem estruturadas é considerada adequada para avaliar a evolução dos conhecimentos teóricos dos estudantes, também chamada de avaliação de domínio cognitivo (Aubin et al, 2020;Epstein, 2007;Vleuten & Schuwirth, 2019). Isso deve explicar parcialmente por que o TP é cada vez mais aplicado em um número maior de países (Vleuten et al, 2018) e em diferentes programas de graduação, como odontologia (Ali et al, 2016;Oliveira et al, 2020), farmácia (Albekairy et al, 2021) e veterinária (Herrmann et al, 2020), bem como na formação médica em nível de pós-graduação (Rutgers et al, 2018), no Brasil e no exterior (Alkhalaf et al, 2021;Sá et al, 2021).…”

Development of a shared item repository for progress testing in veterinary education

“…As a first project step, the partners decided on a one-dimensional blueprint, partly based on the German-speaking VEEs' experiences (10). The blueprint covers the 34 veterinary science disciplines (subject areas) listed in EAEVE/ESEVT Standard Operational Procedures, Annex 2 (22).…”

“…Institutions that have implemented progress testing use different tools apart from appropriate feedback to ensure student participation and engagement. In most institutions, the tests are obligatory, either as a compulsory formative assessment activity or as part of their summative exam system (5,10,49). Some institutions keep tests voluntary but motivate students to engage in the tests by giving credits for participating (25).…”

“…Progress testing is applied as a series of multiplechoice tests (1-4 per year) throughout the study. Each test usually consists of 100-200 items covering all content areas of the curriculum and targets the academic level expected by the students at graduation within all subjects of the curriculum (10,11).…”

“…Progress testing is generally implemented as a low-stakes test for formative reasons or for combined formative and summative purposes. At some faculties, students' engagement is voluntary, at others, taking the tests is compulsory but results are only used for formative purposes or -as at some medical faculties -progress testing is integrated into their cumulative assessment program, e.g., as part of students' portfolios (10).…”