Progress testing in German speaking countries

Abstract

Progress testing was introduced in 1999 at the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin. This Berlin progress test medizin (PTM) started to cooperate with other Medical Schools in 2000. The cooperation grew continuously and now 13 Medical schools in Germany and Austria take part, including more than 8500 Students. This article focuses on the concept and quality of the PTM and the benefits for students and medical schools. It shows how an initial small student initiative has developed into a successful international cooperation of formative testing in medical education.

O Teste de Progresso como Indicador para Melhorias em Curso de Graduação em Medicina

“…Progress testing, quite popular in the Netherlands and other countries for several years, only recently has been valued as an evaluation tool in Brazilian educational institutions. Progress testing has been used by medical schools that have implemented curriculum changes, by some graduate programs and by some individual courses [1][2][3][4][5][6] .…”

“…The content of the test items is based on national curriculum guidelines for medical schools instituted by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The extant literature on medical education suggests that there are different ways of creating and implementing Progress testing [1][2][3][4][5][6]9 . A progress testing was applied twice a year to all students from 2001 to 2004 who were enrolled at the University of São Paulo School of Medicine.…”

Evaluation of Curriculum by Progress Test

“…Ricketts et al summarized the types of information under 6 groups which are produced by PT results [13]. Beside of these, depending on our study results we can add two important information groups which PTs allow us about our curriculum such as: (1) Average student response to "organ systems based" test items to evaluate integrated educational framework; (2) Average student response to individual "department based" test items to evaluate the success of departments Organ systems list is similar with Nouns et al [14] and Muijtjens et al [11] used in their research. For example in the Netherlands multi-centre PT test,…”

Progress Testing in Undergraduate Medical Education

“…Developed concurrently by the University of Missouri Kansas City School of Medicine and LimburgMaastricht University, progress testing is a useful, exhaustive, and longitudinal knowledge testing approach that offers both formative and summative assessment of the knowledge gained by the student throughout an entire academic year. Progress testing is becoming increasingly popular throughout the world [5][6]. It has also been employed at some medical faculties where the problem-based learning method cannot be used [7].…”

“…At another stage in the preparation of the test, tables can be used to prevent representation of different disciplines (Internal Medicine, Pathology, Physiology, Anatomy, Pediatrics, etc.). This also facilitates evaluation and suitable feedback for conventional education programs [24]. Additionally, a classification table for predetermined content can be used to prepare each test.…”