Knowing the Tools in Your Assessment Tool Kit

Academic emergency physicians are frequently called upon to develop assessment methods for evaluating their residents and medical students, but very few academic clinicians receive formal training on the types of assessment tools (e.g. Objective Structures Clinical Examination, Directly Observed Procedures, Problem Based Learning (PBL), fmultiple choice questions, portfolios, etc.) Choosing the right assessment tool to evaluate learners is crucial to creating effective curricula. This session will describe the educational theory behind assessment tools and use this theory to describe how to select assessment tools tailored to learners’ developmental stages. The session will use Miller’s Pyramid of Competence as a framework for this discussion. This session will include a small group, practical exercise in which groups will be asked to identify assessment tools given to them, place the assessment tools on Miller’s Pyramid of Competence, and discuss one advantage and one disadvantage of using the assessment tools for learners. The groups will then reconvene in a large group discussion where each group will present its findings during a facilitator-guided discussion on the use of the assessment tool in developing curricula. All groups will be provided with hard copies of all of the assessment tools so that every participant will have practical experience identifying and evaluating each assessment tool.