World Wide Web program for optimizing and assessing medical student performance during the radiology clerkship

The purpose of this study was to adapt the technology of the World Wide Web to the teaching and evaluation of medical students participating in the radiology clerkship at our institution.

Teaching modules were placed on a local intranet site. One hundred two student evaluations were conducted online as a standardized, written- and image-based test that was administered both before and after the clerkship. The computer-delivered test consisted of 40 standardized questions that were sorted by category (based on American College of Radiology code criteria) and randomly administered from a pool of 200 potential questions. Scores from before and after the clerkship were analyzed statistically to evaluate the effectiveness of the educational program and the student performance. Student case presentation scoring and clerkship administration tasks were also evaluated both before and after implementation of the modules during the first 12 months of this project (July 1997 to July 1998).

A statistically significant (P < .001) improvement in test performance was found in 102 consecutive students, and all 102 students (100%) preferred the digital-testing format. The amount of time needed to tabulate the teacher evaluation, grade the test, and score the oral presentations decreased substantially with the digital system.

An intranet-based method of evaluating students in an ongoing fashion allows for additional growth in content and ease of use during the radiology clerkship.