Curricular innovation in an undergraduate medical program: What is “appropriate” assessment?

Abstract

In post-secondary education, there is a widely-held belief in a "gold standard" for evaluative studies of curricular innovations. In this context, "appropriate" assessment is understood to refer to experimental designs and statistically significant differences in group outcomes. Yet in our evaluative study of a medical undergraduate program, we did not find these concepts to be particularly applicable. Based on our experience, we now feel that it is appropriate to assemble an eclectic mix of scientific findings, show how they have been used for program improvement, and articulate the program's theoretical rationale and social significance. In the absence of statistically significant differences, this comprehensive argument can be used to justify the deployment of curricular innovations. The same may be true of other educational programs that target hard-to-measure changes in affective domains.

The 2011 Program Evaluation Standards: a framework for quality in medical education programme evaluations

“…In the end, our series of studies enabled us to use mixed methods to build an argument based on multiple sources of evidence about programme merit and worth. Our argument rested on both evidence (facts) and values, that is, our claim that the relevance of the programme in teaching 21st century patientcentred skills is an important dimension of programme merit and worth [12]. The lessons we have learned through conducting this retrospective review -a meta-evaluation -have provided some new understandings that will hopefully be meaningful to our colleagues, both in the local context (at McGill) and in the broader community (of medical educators and evaluators).…”

“…Patient-centred communication skills are important 21st century skills that help medicine to serve the public and maintain public trust [12].…”