Preparing for Exams
Exam Administration: Courses are responsible for preparing materials for and administering their exams including securing proctors. Academic Instructional Design & Technology (AIDT) can provide support for proper exam structure and settings in BBL and standardized computer-based testing. Contact the Office of Institutional Research, Evaluation, and Assessment (IREA) for specifics regarding exam preparation. Contact for proctors the OUME staff administrator, Jean Welker.
Exam/Assessment Structure: Exams are designed or selected by course leaders and can be built internally or draw from external sources (such as the NBME customized assessments or question banks created by national societies). We encourage assessments that demonstrate the skills required of a physician including application of knowledge, teamwork, communication and problem solving.
Online Assessment Tools and Computer-Based Testing Efforts: Teaching faculty have taken the initiative to leverage online assessment tools for the administration of tests at UMass Chan Medical School. ExamSoft is available for online assessments and students download exams on their devices through Examplify at set times in a secure environment. Question items can be stored in a question bank for your course and tagged with IREA categories. See the ExamSoft Knowledge Base for more information.
Course leaders will be able to:
- Determine the appropriate assessment format (multiple choice, short answer, essay, paper...individual or team-based... standardized patient encounters, simulation or objective structured clinical exams (OSCE)
- Select In-class or take home, open note or closed book, and include a professionalism statement about sharing answers
- Implement a diversity of assessment methods
- Ask faculty for internal exams to write questions while creating teaching materials to include key points (OUME can arrange for faculty development in best practices for question-writing, contact Gail March Cohen, PhD., Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education
- Review and edit questions as necessary
- Administer online (using BBL or ExamSoft)
- Score the assessment with faculty and others
- Assess student clinical performance with the Student Performance Evaluation(SPE) form
- Provide formative assessment (not included in final grade) and feedback (verbal and narrative) throughout the course to identify and address learning needs
- Design the summative assessment to count as no more than 80% of the final grade
Exam Structure in PeopleSoft Gradebook: Information on exam structure (dates, number of exams, names of exams, weights, cutoffs) is collected in writing by IREA at least 2 weeks prior to the course start date. If IREA does not receive such information, weekly follow-ups with cc to Senior Director for IREA and Assistant Dean for OUME will be sent to course leaders and administrators.
FOM1 and FOM2: Course leaders in FOM1 and FOM2 need to inform students regarding expectations around assessments:
• Describe the kind of assessments used in the course
• Explain the access students will have to assessments
• Recognize any sample responses/answers
To support consistency among courses regarding definitions, communications with students and standard practices, the FOM 1 and FOM 2 curriculum committees jointly adopted a policy that is posted on all BBL web sites Policies and Procedures Applicable to All FOM Courses Approved by Curriculum Committees.
Pre-exam reviews for FOM1 and FOM2 students: As course leaders, you can option to provide pre-exam reviews and invite faculty to review key topics and answer student questions. These sessions should be scheduled at the start of the course so students can plan to attend in scheduled course time or as optional sessions outside of course time that do not conflict with other courses or protected time. Indicate whether these will be recorded.
Post-exam review for FOM1 and FOM2 students: Course leaders are expected to provide feedback on summative in-class exams to support learning. (This is not feasible for NBME customized exams.) It is best if post-exam reviews are scheduled at the start of the course so that students can option in advance to attend. Post exam reviews (scheduled approximately 1 week post-exam) should have answers projected or posted immediately after the exam to allow students to compare their own notes (on scratch paper or by memory) to correct answers and estimate their performance.
Exams in Courses with Block Structure: Some courses are organized into blocks ands should have a 'block leader' to serve as primary contact for students, faculty and administration and to provide general oversight for the block (recruit faculty, review materials, create exam questions, etc.) Blocks are free-standing courses and thus appear as course components in the grading process. Block grades may be the responsibility of the block leader in consultation with the course leaders who are ultimately responsible for ensuring timely submission to IREA. Block leaders may participate in post-exam reviews and other administrative sessions at the discretion of the course leaders.
Missed exams: The only acceptable excuses for not taking an exam at its scheduled time are religious observances, personal illness or serious illness/death of an immediate family member. Any such conflicts should be brought to the course leaders attention as early as possible in the academic year. The course leaders/administrator will help with any missed material and facilitate the rescheduling of the missed exam. Course leaders may ask the student to provide a physician's note documenting a personal illness. See Student Handbook for further details.
Exam Scoring and Reporting: Preliminary item analysis, histogram, alphabetic and descending exam score reports will be emailed in a PDF format to the course co-leaders and representatives within 3 working days after receiving exam sheets with answer key or after the official exam date in ExamSoft. A request for a copy of student exam sheet should be sent to the Institutional Research, Evaluation, and Assessment (IREA).
Uploading Student Exam Scores to Gradebook in the PeopleSoft Database: A request in writing to the IREA is needed to authorize the upload. Any discrepancies regarding the class roster need to be immediately reported by course co-leaders or their representatives to the Registrar’s office. Uploading the exam scores to the PeopleSoft database makes the scores immediately available to the students and the Associate Dean for Student Affairs. For adjustments to an exam score(s) that has/have been uploaded to Gradebook, please notify IREA in writing.
Key Student Affairs Policies and Definitions: The Student Handbook describes students’ academic performance/grading with regard to advancement, Honor Code and Professionalism policies, and Preclinical and Clinical Grading and Progress Board Processes.
Narrative assessment: The T.H. Chan School of Medicine values narrative assessment for courses and clerkships in which this sort of assessment is appropriate and where meaningful feedback can be offered to learners. This includes all clinical experiences, those with consistent small group leaders, relevant individual exercises, group projects or experiences or span a course or clerkship.