Portfolio assessment in medical students' final examinations

The introduction of an outcome-based approach to education at Dundee Medical School in Scotland instigated a search for assessment methods that would appropriately assess the students' achievements in terms of the learning outcomes. Portfolio assessment has been developed for this purpose and has been adopted for the summative assessment of students in their final examination in Dundee. The contents of the portfolio and the assessment process have been defined and the first cohort of students to be assessed in this way has been studied. The evaluation of the approach demonstrated strong staff support. Students were also positive although with some reservations. It is concluded that portfolio assessment is a powerful approach to assessing a range of curriculum outcomes not easily assessed by other methods and is worthy of inclusion in the assessor's toolkit.