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Defining a Methodology for Creating Consistent Resident Oral Exams to Aid in Assessment of Progress Using Principles From Bloom's Taxonomy


E Clouser

E Clouser*, J Gagneur , D Harrington , Mayo Clinic Arizona, Phoenix, AZ

Presentations

MO-DE-201-6 (Monday, July 31, 2017) 1:45 PM - 3:45 PM Room: 201


Purpose: During the course of the two years of residency the learner is exposed to every topic in the field of their sub-specialty of Medical Physics. Assessing the progress of a resident can be more difficult than a graduate student, in addition to “book learning” the resident is developing critical skills that can include hands on or problem solving that is hard to assess by standard testing methods. To assess the progress of the resident over the course of the two years, the difficulty of the examining needs to be consistent or grow more difficult in a controlled way. We are sharing a method we have developed and are in the process of testing.

Methods: Questions were submitted by each of the module advisors and the program directors added to the question banks. Each question is graded based on two criteria. The first comes from the six levels discussed in Bloom’s Taxonomy (BT). BT is in reference to levels of teaching effectiveness, but we are using it in reverse as levels of proof of understanding and therefor the difficulty of how the question is asked. The second criterion is established by determining on a scale of 1 to 5 at what level the resident would have learned the knowledge and therefor how difficult. These are added together and the question now has a score.

Results: Historic Exam difficulty scores ranged from 52 to 30 points on a 9 question oral exam with a standard deviation of 6.4 points, a new target of 40 points with a standard deviation of 1 or less will be used.

Conclusion: It is too early to draw conclusions on how well this will work over the course of several resident terms, but so far it is well received by both parties.


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