Development of a Comprehensive Assessment Examination for Baccalaureate Pharmacy Students
Associate Professor Maureen A. Smythe Pharm.D.pages: 67 - 76
- DOI: 10.1300/J060v06n03_07
- Version of record first published: 11May1998
Abstract:
The College of Pharmacy at Wayne Sate University recently implemented a revised competency-based baccalaureate pharmacy curriculum. All graduation competencies are cross-referenced to a specific course within the curriculum. The objectives of this project were to: 1. develop a valid and reliable comprehensive assessment examination, and 2. determine if student learning on experiential training can be measured by an improvement in student performance on the comprehensive examination. A total of 311 questions submitted by faculty underwent external review for content validity. Exam questions meeting an acceptable level of content validity, n = 286, were field tested on 196 students from six colleges of pharmacy. Questions meeting an appropriate difficulty level, 30–80%, and an appropriate discrimination level, point biserial correlation coefficient of ≥ 0.2 for the correct response were included in the final question pool. A total of 183 questions met the above criteria. These questions were used to create a 100-point comprehensive assessment examination which is given to Wayne State University students just prior to experiential training. A second version of the examination was created in 1997 from the excess questions and administered to students after completion of experiential training. Student performance significantly improved after clerkship. The comprehensive examination will serve multiple purposes at Wayne State University including student self-assessment, a measure of student learning both across the curriculum and during experiential training.