Undergraduate Students’ Role in Spreading and Controlling the Assessment System

Abstract

The Clinical-Basic Sessions (CBS) are a compulsory practical activity of the new Degree in Medicine course curriculum of the Complutense University of Madrid. They are integrated in the strategy of transversal competences improvement. Students can participate in a team work studying and presenting a clinical case as speakers or, if they are students of the sixth course, as tutors, or can act as listener assessors of the public presentation of the cases and the speakers. Teachers can participate tutoring a case and evaluating the students participating in it, or can act as speakers’ assessors in a classroom where other clinical cases are presented.

In 2013/2014, important changes in the evaluation process and the evaluation criteria were introduces. First of all, objective tools were used so that students knew which aspects will be evaluated and evaluators had a guide for assessment. Two rubrics were created, one for the continuos evaluation of the students in each clinical case (rubric A), and the other one for listener assessors to evaluare the speakers’ presentation (rubric B). Also, the continuous evaluation was made not only by tutor teachers but also by the team students (peer evaluation).

Secondly, the evaluation became telematic. Rubrics A and B were transferred into forms A and B using Google Drive. This way, evaluators have to complete the forms to do their assessment. The attendance control system need to be implemented in order to prove the listener assessor’s participation. For this purpose, a double code system was set up, one for each case and a second one for each case’s assessor. Both codes were needed to complete the on line forms.

A new figure was created to inform participants correctly, the Tutor Students for the Evaluation Control, a sixth course student who was assigned to no clinical case. Its role was very important: giving information properly to the working teams, explaining what the rubrics are and the student assessor role, informing the listener evaluators in the classrooms, managing the attendance control and explaining how to digitalize the assessments. Also, assessors were asked to complete the satisfaction surveys included in the forms. Several documents were prepared and uploaded to a Virtual Campus space to make their tasks easier.

39 students worked as Tutor Students for the Evaluation Control, explaining the new system to 104 teams of teachers and students and managing the 26 classrooms where 52 cases were presented. Positive results were achieved. There were no incidents even though the massive participation. Actually, 33% of the enrolled students in the degree participated in the clinical cases and 70% took part as listener assessors. The electronic forms were sent promptly, collecting 50% of the shipments between the 4th and 7th day. Also, participation in the surveys surpassed 90%. Finally, 70% of the survey’s respondents, declared to recommend maintaining the evaluation system. We can concluye that the new figure has achieved its aims, contributing definitely to the implementation of CBS evaluation implementation. In spite of its success, it is necessary to continue working to implement the rubrics and to drive forward into learning by assessing.