SHIFTING from face-to-face oral assessments to online objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) may drive learning, Sydney University School of Pharmacy, Associate Professor, Rebekah Moles, believes.
Speaking during an International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) online panel discussion focused on pharmacy education during the COVID-19 crisis on Wed, Moles revealed plans to conduct OSCEs using video call service, Zoom.
"We ran a full practice OSCE exam [on Tue and Wed] with our 50 MPharm students," she said.
"We weren't sure how it was going to work, by using a Zoom platform to run an OSCE, but I'm very pleased to announce that it ran perfectly."
Under the model the school plans to use for its OSCEs in Jun, students will be given a week to prepare for 18 cases, to be assessed on three, rather than an hour to prepare for three cases, involving speaking to a doctor, a patient and another pharmacist, which was the case in the past with the school's face-to-face OSCEs.
"You still have to learn in-depth about 18 cases within that week, which I'm really excited about, because I know assessment drives learning, so I think our students are going to learn more," she said.
Moles told the webinar that the use of 18 separate cases would protect the integrity of the assessments, noting "yes, they're going to cooperate on preparing for these 18 cases... [but] if you've learned the information maybe it doesn't matter if you've collaborated on preparing for those 18 cases".
"You have no idea exactly what we're going to ask during the exam," she said.
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