Author: David Davies, david.davies@warwick.ac.uk
JISC e-Learning Activity Area: e-Assessment
Higher Education Academy Subject Centre: Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine
This case study illustrates...an effect on learning, an effect on student personal development, innovation in learning and teaching, an influence on policy, use of resources
Tangible Benefits
What tangible benefits did this e-learning approach produce?
We have yet to fully evaluate our new system but our aims are as follows, in no particular order:
- To raise awareness amongst teaching staff and module coordinators about the importance of learning outcomes in the context of GMC competency statements.
- To help each student to personally identify their own learning needs to attain the GMC competencies.
- To help each student appreciate how the course is an integrated whole that helps them attain the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to become a graduate doctor.
- To develop the in-house technical skills to confidently handle complex data and to create appropriate systems to interpret and use data to help teaching and learning.
- To improve the efficiency of exam marks processing through the use of OMR marking sheets.
- To help students develop an enthusiasm for learning and to see it as a life-long activity.
- To help prepare each student for work in the National Health Service.
- To help distinguish the Warwick medical Course as being innovative and responsive to the needs of 21st century healthcare.
We have already been able to measure the impact of our approach as it has influenced assessment policy. Our assessment procedures manual is being updated as a result of this new approach.
Did implementation of this e-learning approach have any disadvantages or drawbacks?
We have so far not encountered any drawbacks to our new system other than the technical developments required to make it work in the first place. The reliance on optically marked exam marker's sheets is still a rate-limiting step but we hope to improve those with each iteration of the system.
There is clearly a cost (rather than a drawback) in that we have identified the need for a new IT post to help create the systems required to roll this out to the whole course and to train admin staff in WMS.
We can see no pedagogical drawbacks to providing students with better, individualised feedback on exam performance. Greater awareness of knowledge and skills will have a positive impact on student personal development.
How did this e-learning approach accord with or differ from any relevant departmental and/or institutional strategies?
This assessment feedback approach was developed alongside the strategic decision to move towards integrated exam questions. By using integrated questions we recognised the need to provide students with better feedback as it would not be easy for every student to relate performance on integrated exams to module teaching. So in that sense the development of this new feedback system was entirely complementary to the strategic goals of the institution.
When we were successful in winning development funds from the University centre, one of the selling points was that our system could in theory at least be adopted by any other department/course on campus, and that was perceived as an advantage.
Our new feedback system is now embedded, in that integrated questions coded against GMC competency areas are a routine part of Phase I written exam planning.
