Welcome to Faculty Development Snippets, an online faculty development repository of resources and lessons ideal for today's busy medical educators. Lessons should take no more than 5 minutes to complete and contain follow-up resources and reflective questions to assist with developing strategies to embed these concepts into your everyday practice.
Over the past decade, medical education has placed a renewed emphasis on assessment, focusing on ways to provide accurate, reliable, and timely assessments of the competence of trainees and practicing physicians. Such assessments have three main goals: to optimize the capabilities of all learners and practitioners by providing motivation and direction for future learning, to protect the public by identifying incompetent physicians, and to provide a basis for choosing applicants for advanced training.
Assessment can be formative (guiding future learning, providing reassurance, promoting reflection, and shaping values) or summative (making an overall judgment about competence, fitness to practice, or qualification for advancement to higher levels of responsibility).
Formative Assessment
The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that instructors can use to improve their teaching and students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:
Formative assessments are generally low stakes, meaning they have low or no point value.
Summative Assessment
The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. Summative assessments are often high stakes, meaning they have a high point value.
Selecting Assessment Methods
Selecting appropriate assessment methods is a complex process. Assessments must align well with the intended learning outcomes. Before selecting an assessment, faculty should first ask what do I want students to be able to do after this learning experience? (learning goals/objectives). Faculty should then ask, “What would the resident have to do to convince me that he/she has achieved these goals?” (assessment).
Over the past decade, medical education has placed a renewed emphasis on assessment, focusing on ways to provide accurate, reliable, and timely assessments of the competence of trainees and practicing physicians. Such assessments have three main goals: to optimize the capabilities of all learners and practitioners by providing motivation and direction for future learning, to protect the public by identifying incompetent physicians, and to provide a basis for choosing applicants for advanced training.
Assessment can be formative (guiding future learning, providing reassurance, promoting reflection, and shaping values) or summative (making an overall judgment about competence, fitness to practice, or qualification for advancement to higher levels of responsibility).
Formative Assessment
The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that instructors can use to improve their teaching and students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:
- help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work
- help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately
Formative assessments are generally low stakes, meaning they have low or no point value.
Summative Assessment
The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. Summative assessments are often high stakes, meaning they have a high point value.
Selecting Assessment Methods
Selecting appropriate assessment methods is a complex process. Assessments must align well with the intended learning outcomes. Before selecting an assessment, faculty should first ask what do I want students to be able to do after this learning experience? (learning goals/objectives). Faculty should then ask, “What would the resident have to do to convince me that he/she has achieved these goals?” (assessment).