Assessment should reflect the objectives of the course. If the objectives comprise knowledge, skills, and behavior, the assessment to be used (formative, continuing, and summative) should test these three domains. These are basic concepts in structuring an assessment system.

You will need to construct a blueprint covering the objectives and classifying items under knowledge, skills, and behavior or another domain such as psychomotor, communication, etc.

Then you need to include in your blueprint the tools to be used in the assessment. For example, we know from research that MCQs, Short Answer Questions, are reliable tools that can test knowledge. OSCE can be used for testing skills and communication etc. I hope this overall helps you in planning your assessment. You will need to attend training workshops on assessment, writing questions, and designing a blueprint, assessing validity and reliability, giving feedback,

Assessment should reflect the objectives of the course. If the objectives comprise knowledge, skills, and behavior, the assessment to be used (formative, continuing, and summative) should test these three domains. These are basic concepts in structuring an assessment system.

You will need to construct a blueprint covering the objectives and classifying items under knowledge, skills, and behavior or another domain such as psychomotor, communication, etc.

Then you need to include in your blueprint the tools to be used in the assessment. For example, we know from research that MCQs, Short Answer Questions, are reliable tools that can test knowledge. OSCE can be used for testing skills and communication etc. I hope this overall helps you in planning your assessment. You will need to attend training workshops on assessment, writing questions, and designing a blueprint, assessing validity and reliability, giving feedback,

Assessing students activity in the rotations (formal cases, informal cases, intervention). also evaluate patient education and journal club, DI questions. you can use also final written exam (MCQ, Essay).

I agree with Dr. Samy. There is a close relationship between assessment and learning. In fact, the key purpose of assessment is learning. This makes it very crucial for teachers to plan assessments so that student learning can be enhanced.

While conducting workplace based assessment, it would be better if we are clear about the following;

1. We need to ensure training content, expected competencies and assessment methods are aligned.

2. To facilitate learning, formative assessment techniques need to be applied. After/during each assessment events, it is important to provide feedback (constructive) to the trainees.

3. It is essential to plan assessment events strategically to direct the learner to meet the desired outcome.

Below mentioned are few techniques you may use for student assessment at clinical attachment sites.

1. Direct observation of patient encounters (can be done using a number of ways: mini-CEX, Clinical work sampling, Direct Observation of Procedural skills (DOPS) - All these are suitable to assess/evaluate psychomotor domain

2. Case based discussions / Case presentations (Cognitive and affective domains)

3. Multi-source feedback - Generally to cover the affective domain

4. MCQ's, Case analysis, problem-solving type questions (Cognitive domain)

5. Portfolios - An effective method for both formative and summative assessments. Portfolios also allows learners to be creative and plan a variety of activities so that they can showcase their progress.

For further reading, you may get to the following article

Norcini J, Burch V. Workplace-based assessment as an educational tool: AMEE Guide No. 31. Medical Teacher. 2007;29(9-10):855-871.

Thanks Dr. Samy, Dr. May, Dr. Ali, and Dr. Babu for your contributed answers which were quite useful and informative. The course is already running with a mix of summative, formative and continuous assessment domains. My point is to explore new evaluation choices under each domain and keep on track with the advances in experiential learning assessment.

Clerkships and Internships are experiential learning of clinical skills that require continuous assessment and should be more objective in evaluation. For instance, we take 80% of the assessment of clerkship attachments of Clinical Pharmacy students through the following process.

1. Bed-side Case presentation (one case per week): 15% work done by the student prior to his presentation is critically evaluated. We do have a 10 point checklist which we use to evaluate the student competencies in clinical settings.

2. Seminar on Pharmacotherapy topics related to particular clinical specialty (10%) and 5% pretest (Questions will be given prior to the seminar presentation- to understand the student competencies on the topic). We focus on how students are presenting and inclusion of updated information, guidelines, interventions and brief description of pharmacotherapy, etc.

3. Attendance and Ethics (10%): Punctuality, relationship with other health professionals, dressing, quality of time spent during the experiential learning process will be evaluated.

4. Bed-side evaluation (20%): Each student will be allotted one bed in particular ward randomly and one hour time will be provided prior to work up. Students will be evaluated according to the 8-point checklist by two preceptors every time.

5. Portfolio (15%): Students must submit their clinical work every week in the form of portfolio and will be critically evaluated. These portfolios should be submitted in the form of SOAP format (National Format): depth of practical work, and interventions done by the student during their experiential clinical rotation, and Drug therapy problems resolved etc will be included.

6. Journal club (5%): Two latest journal articles related to particular clinical ward will be given to 2 students randomly for critical appraisal and make them to present before their group members. Critical appraisal formats will be provided based on the type of research paper. This helps the students to adopt the EBM into their practice.

Upon completion of each attachment, students will requested to provide feedback about their experiential learning and will also ask them to evaluate their preceptors competencies. This process will enable us to overcome the barriers and understand the students needs on particular clinical settings.

Such a great and detailed answer Dr Akshaya!

Thank you very much for the input.