Providing all students with feedback on their OSCE’s performance via an interactive website, Adrian Molyneux and Chris Harrison
The National Student Survey (NSS) has demonstrated a strong student desire for more, and more timely, feedback. Assessments in medical education, especially Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs), are particularly expensive, so it makes sense to maximise the value that can be obtained from them. Traditionally, feedback following ‘high-stakes’ summative OSCEs has been limited to confirmation of whether students have passed or failed. Feedback after OSCEs is likely to be popular with students and provides value for money. However, the feasibility of providing detailed feedback to whole year groups is difficult. Most resources are therefore usually invested in students who fail assessments. However, all students would benefit from feedback to improve their performance. This is particularly relevant in healthcare, where it is important to identify potential gaps in a student’s competence, even when they have passed an assessment overall.
To try to meet these conflicting needs, we have designed an interactive website to deliver feedback after all OSCEs and OSSEs. It is designed to upload spreadsheets created for the exam board in a simple process to enable delivery of feedback at the same time as release of results, via the institutional VLE. Students are given options to receive the feedback in a variety of different formats, including station-by-station analysis or analysis of their performance in certain skill domains across multiple stations. Guidance is given to help students reflect on the feedback and develop an action plan. When it was introduced to Year 1 students, 130 students made over 4000 separate page hits within the first 24 hours. We are performing detailed evaluation of how students use the website and how long they spend on different sections.
Following this successful trial and enthusiastic acceptance by students, this method of dissemination of students’ performance and feedback will be embedded in our practices. It is planned to evolve the process to harvest and deliver richer content and offer compatibility with the ever growing desire to access tailored content on mobile devices.
This is an ongoing innovation for further details on its progress please contact Adrian Molyneux or Chris Harrison
