Faculty Development for Medical Educators

Assessment is an ongoing process aimed at understanding and improving student learning. It involves making our expectations explicit and public; setting appropriate criteria and high standards for learning quality; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards; and using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance.  (Thomas Angelo).
 

Assessment is important for the following reasons:

• Guides instruction
• Confirms students’ understanding of content
• Determines if reteaching, remediating, or enriching is needed
• Identifies strengths and weaknesses
• Determines gaps in content knowledge or understanding
• Promotes self-regulating strategies 
• Determines if learning outcomes have been achieved
• Collects data to record and analyze
• Evaluates course and teaching effectiveness

Assessments answer the following questions: 

• Are we teaching what we think we are teaching?
• Are students learning what they are supposed to be learning?
• Is there a way to teach the subject better, thereby promoting better learning?
• Do we have enough data to show that our courses (and programs) are effective?

Start with the learning objectives first!

Generally, when we think of course design, we focus on the teaching methods and activities first; however we should be using assessment and learning outcomes to drive how we teach.  This method is called Backwards Design. 

The diagram below shows the steps of Backwards Design

Example of Backwards Design

Here is an example of how backwards design works.  This shows why starting with the learning objectives is crucial, followed by alignment of assessment methods and instructional activities.

The diagram below shows the steps of the assessment cycle.