Online examiner calibration across specialties

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Assessment in Healthcare
• Digital Learning Platforms

Background:

• Integrating undergraduate medical curricula across specialties offers patient- and learner-centered benefits.
• Interspecialty calibration of examiner judgments is crucial for integrated curricula.
• Fair clinical assessment is vital for medical students and educators.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of an online pilot for interdisciplinary examiner calibration.
• To explore the potential of interspecialty discussions to improve assessment quality.
• To identify recommendations for enhancing clinician engagement in assessment calibration.

Main Methods:

• Clinical teachers rated video-recorded Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) performances.
• Participants engaged in online discussions via the university's learning management system.
• Post-project surveys (free-text and Likert-scale) analyzed participant feedback.

Main Results:

• 25 clinicians rated performances, and 18 contributed comments, despite recruiting 68.
• Participants valued interdisciplinary rating calibration and discussion, including rural doctors.
• The asynchronous online format offered advantages but faced considerable IT challenges.

Conclusions:

• Interspecialty assessment discussions can enrich perspectives and enhance collaboration.
• Specialty assessment cultures or content expertise are not barriers to integrated assessment.
• System alignment and potential face-to-face components could improve engagement.