The Differential Impact of Various Assessment Parameters on the Medical Students Performance in the Professional Anatomy Examination in a New Medical School

Abstract

There is a dearth of knowledge on the level of agreement between all the various assessment tasks on the same content area, in order to test this hypothesis we adopted the concept of convergent validity and also to isolate area of academic weakness among the students and to readjust the curriculum content to balance the weakness. A blinded cohort retrospective study was carried out on a total of sixty-six third year medical students who had sat for their first professional examination in anatomy in the new medical college of Lagos State University. Using records of their grades in the various assessments parameters-the average end-in course assessment, short essays question (SEQ), multiple-choice questions (MCQ), and practical (Steeple-chase). The mean + S.D. Pearson's correlation with students t-test (p< 0.05 being significant) were analyzed using the computerized SPSS 11 (SPSS inc. Chicago, Illinois) software package. The practical was significantly correlated with overall performance (r = 0.89, p< 0.01); with the student t-value of 6.15 (p< 0.01). Although, the SEQ showed significant correlation to overall performance (r =0.72; p<0.01), the t-value of 0.4 was non-significant, but, within an acceptable range. The practical, MCQ, SEQ and end-incourse showed an overall rank order of relative performance in assessment tasks, therefore indicates that, in general, students performance in the Professional examination was better than in the end-incourse examination and hence, the need to reappraise this pattern and emphasize the role of incourse assessment in the curriculum.

Assessment of anatomical knowledge: Approaches taken by higher education institutions

“…The anatomy spotter exam has several aliases in the literature: it is also referred to as the bell ringer format (Aziz et al, 2014), anatomy steeplechase (Inuwa et al, 2011a;Shaibah and van der Vleuten, 2013;Pratten et al, 2014) or simply anatomy practical exam (Lukić et al, 2001;Poljičanin et al, 2009;Severo and Tavares, 2010). The spotter is described as an exam in which wet specimens, plastic models, bones, histological slides and imaging are used, prepinned with labels/flags, and there are between 30 (Schubert et al, 2009;Sagoo et al, 2016) and 40-50 (Shittu et al, 2006;Inuwa et al, 2011a) such stations. Each station has 1-2 questions relating to the pinned material, which students are given time (40 sec to 1 min) to answer.…”

“…Questions range from basic identification of structures to ones of application and function. Some ask students to select the correct answer from a list of five options (MCQ style) (Schubert et al, 2009;Inuwa et al, 2011a;Ikah et al, 2016), while others do not specify whether MCQ questions or free text responses are utilized (Lukić et al, 2001;Shittu et al, 2006;Poljičanin et al, 2009;Severo and Tavares, 2010). MCQs generate higher mean scores than questions using the free text response format, possibly because of the cueing effect (Shaibah and van der Vleuten, 2013).…”

Differences in Multiple Choice and Short Answer Questions Performance Among Medical and Dental Trainees as Reflected in Their Anatomy Course

“…Therefore, final examination grades may correlate more with final MCQs scores. It was also reported that MCQs can be used to test remembering domain and considered to be a good predictor of a student's performance in other elements of anatomical assessment [19].…”

Status of implementation of short answer question in anatomy examination of MBBS course in Bangladesh

“…In Bangladesh, medical education is centrally controlled by the Government and run a unique undergraduate curriculum throughout the country in both public and private sectors. The present official form of undergraduate medical curriculum has first evolved in 1988 followed by revision in 2002 and 2012 [7]. In the undergraduate medical curriculum of 2002 of Bangladesh, extensive modification of the assessment system was done.…”