Introduction of Grading Rubrics to Egyptian Pharmacy Students’ Oral Assessments

Introduction of Grading Rubrics to Egyptian Pharmacy Students’ Oral

Assessments

Dalia A. Hamdy

BPSc, MSc, PhD, RP(ACP), MRSCAssistant Professor

Faculty of Pharmacy-Alexandria UniversityEgyptian Young Academy of Sciences (EYAS) Member

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Oral Rubrics: Outline

• Oral Exams: Introduction• Oral Rubric: Pharm-AlexU Experience– Methodology– Results– Conclusions– Limitations– Updates

Oral Exam Rubrics-DH-April 2016 2

3

Oral Exams: Introduction• Teachers (Facilitators)help students develop and attain skills, knowledge and attitudes.

• Assessorscertify their competency to join a discipline, a community or a profession

Oral Exam Rubrics-DH-April 2016

4

Oral Exams: Introduction• Higher Education Assessment methodsShould be

• aligned with both learning outcomes and activities• utilized for educational improvement


which students

learn best

under what

condition

5

Oral Exams: Introduction• In designing any exam for grading students

work


What is being

Assessed?

6

Oral Exams: Introduction• In designing any exam for grading students

work we need to

-Identify and clarify assessment standards and criteria

-share such criteria with the student before-hand


7

Oral Exams: IntroductionThe Pharmacy program curricula in the Egyptian Universities have three exams for students’ assessment

1. Written exams (40-50%)2. Practical exams (20-30%) 3. Oral exams (10-20%)


8

Oral Exams: IntroductionOral exams • Assessment in which students responds verbally to the

assessment tasks

• Enabling students’ assessment on all five cognitive domains of Bloom’s taxonomy

• Limitation: concerns regarding subjectivity of oral exams, specially with the involvement of a large number of faculty staff members to handle the large number of students present in the Egyptian Universities.


9

Oral Exams: IntroductionOral exams


10

Oral Exams: IntroductionOral exams• Development & use of appropriate rubrics can

be used to – decrease subjectivity – Ensure consistency across time and across graders

• Rubrics are scoring/evaluation tools that describe the assessment performance expectations



Oral Rubric: Pharm-AlexU Experience

Methodology:• The oral exam targeted areas were defined as

testing students’ 1. knowledge2. communication skills, 3. problem solving 4. critical thinking ability



Methodology:• Study took Place in January-June 2013• A rubric was developed



Methodology:• A rubric was developed



Methodology:• A rubric was developed

• An oral question or assessment was assigned to test each item in the rubric.

• A sample of 42 pharmacy undergraduate students, year 1 clinical program, were assessed



Methodology:

Assessor 1 Assessor 23 years of experience 25 years of experience

Applied the rubric -Did not apply the rubric-Asked the students to go over the

questions in a provided sheet + other questions

Tested 3-4 students at a time Tested 1 student at a time



Methodology:

-Grades were out of 15 by each assessor

-The mean of both grades would be used as their final grade



Results:

Assessor 1Assessor 2

5

3

Total Assessment time (h)

Assessor 1Assessor 2

7

5

Average time per student (min)

-Assessor 1 required computer assistance-A developed excel sheet was used to convert the rubric grades of each criterion with its weight to real grades for each student.



Results:

0 ≤2 ≥3 and ≤6

15%

44% 41%

The difference between the grades given for the same student



Results:

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15-1

1

3

5

7

9

11

13

15

Assesor 1 Assesor 2

Grade

Num

ber o

f Stu

dent

sA histogram representing the distribution of students grades by different assessors



Conclusion:-Oral assessments are an essential component of pharmacy students’ education

-They provide the students with an opportunity to -use higher-order thinking skills -communicate information to patients &

healthcare professionals



Conclusion:-Points of strength:

1. The use of the mixed modules; students are provided with a question sheet at the beginning of the exam that they need to answer in writing before they enter their oral assessment

2. The assessors involved in the exam are PhD holders at the rank of at least Assistant professors



Conclusion:-Points of strength:

3. each student is assessed by one assessor, however, in small groups, as in clinical pharmacy programs, the student is assessed by more than one assessor.



Conclusion:-Suggestion:• Implementation of two additional steps to increase the

validity of the oral exam and decrease subjectivity and inter-rater variability among assessors.

First step: introduction of a grading rubric Second step: train the examiners on rubric use specially newly hired ones who lack experience



Conclusion:-Advantage:1. Better student assessment to include different

intellectual skills & better identification of learning gaps

2. Decrease subjectivity and increase caliber of the newly hired staff.

3. Better student satisfaction and less stress due to clarity of assessment criteria



Conclusion:-Limitation:

1. Time (experience & training)

2. Computer availability (updates)


Updatesimplemented

in June 2014

&2015

Thank You!

27Oral Exam Rubrics-DH-April 2016

Date post:	16-Jan-2017
Category:	Education
Upload:	dalia-a-hamdy
View:	172 times
Download:	0 times