gms | German Medical Science

Assessment in most medical schools tends to evolve, depending on the interests and

enthusiasms of the staff involved. This is particularly the case where the assessment is the responsibility of individual teachers. In a perfect world assessment will be overseen by specialists at Medical School level, and integrated to parallel the clinical world as closely as possible. If the world is less than perfect, then individual departments or teachers will need to make decisions for themselves.

There have been considerable moves in our understanding of the way people learn, and in this talk I will discuss the way in which our new understandings can help us rationalise and improve the way we assess our students. There are four domains which we might like to assess. In order of increasing complexity they are recall, elaboration, organisation and reflection. Different assessment methods allow us to test different domains of learning, but each has their disadvantages in terms of delivery or marking. In the end, all assessment is a compromise between educational theory and practicality, but by understanding the theory we can get the best compromise.

The final element of assessment is how to give feedback. In the talk I will address each of these issues in turn.