Integrating a Longitudinal Course on the Principles of Research in an Outcomes-Based Undergraduate Medical Education Curriculum.

Background And Need For Innovation: Teaching and learning approaches can support medical students in developing the research skills necessary to be adept consumers of scientific research. Despite various influencing factors, existing literature on effective strategies in undergraduate medical education remains limited.

Goal Of Innovation: Using a spiraled curriculum, we created and evaluated a longitudinal course to enhance medical students' research abilities.

Making judgments based on reported observations of trainee performance: a scoping review in Health Professions Education.

Background: Educators now use reported observations when assessing trainees' performance. Unfortunately, they have little information about how to design and implement assessments based on reported observations.

Objective: The purpose of this scoping review was to map the literature on the use of reported observations in judging health professions education (HPE) trainees' performances.

Validity in the Next Era of Assessment: Consequences, Social Impact, and Equity.

Validity has long held a venerated place in education, leading some authors to refer to it as the "sine qua non" or "cardinal virtue" of assessment. And yet, validity has not held a fixed meaning; rather it has shifted in its definition and scope over time. In this Eye Opener, the authors explore if and how current conceptualizations of validity fit a next era of assessment that prioritizes patient care and learner equity.

Eight ways to get a grip on validity as a social imperative.

Validity as a social imperative foregrounds the social consequences of assessment and highlights the importance of building quality into the assessment development and monitoring processes. is informed by current assessment trends such as programmatic-, longitudinal-, and rater-based assessment, and is one of the conceptualizations of validity currently at play in the Health Professions Education (HPE) literature. This Black Ice is intended to help readers to get a grip on how to embed principles of in the development and quality monitoring of an assessment.

Will ChatGPT's Free Language Editing Service Level the Playing Field in Science Communication?: Insights from a Collaborative Project with Non-native English Scholars.

ChatGPT has been widely heralded as a way to level the playing field in scientific communication through its free language editing service. However, such claims lack systematic evidence. A writing scholar (LL) and six non-native English scholars researching health professions education collaborated on this Writer's Craft to fill this gap.

An exploration of values in medical school admissions processes: the interplay between contextual factors, admissions practices, and validity.

Medical school admissions is a contentious and high stakes selection activity. Many assessment approaches are available to support selection; but how are decisions about building, monitoring, and adapting admissions systems made? What shapes the processes and practices that underpin selection decisions? We explore how these decisions are made across several Canadian medical schools, and how values shape the creation, monitoring, and adaptation of admissions systems. Using phenomenography (a qualitative method suited to examining variability), the authors analyzed interviews with 10 current or previous heads of admissions from 10 different undergraduate medical education programs in Canada.

Exploring medical students' use of principles of self-explanation and structured reflection during clerkship.

Background: While educators observe gaps in clerkship students' clinical reasoning (CR) skills, students report few opportunities to develop them. This study aims at exploring how students who used self-explanation (SE) and structured reflection (SR) for CR learning during preclinical training, applied these learning strategies during clerkship.

Methods: We conducted an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study involving medical students.

Assessing commitment to reflection: perceptions of medical students.

Background: While developing reflection skills is considered important by educators, the assessment of these skills is often associated with unintended negative consequences. In the context of a mandatory longitudinal course that aims to promote the development of reflection on professional identity, we assessed students' commitment to reflection. This study explores students' perception of this assessment by their mentor.

Assessment Practices in Continuing Professional Development Activities in Health Professions: A Scoping Review.

Introduction: In continuing professional development (CPD), educators face the need to develop and implement innovative assessment strategies to adhere to accreditation standards and support lifelong learning. However, little is known about the development and validation of these assessment practices. We aimed to document the breadth and depth of what is known about the development and implementation of assessment practices within CPD activities.

Measuring Health Care Work-Related Contextual Factors: Development of the McGill Context Tool.

Introduction: Contextual factors can influence healthcare professionals' (HCPs) competencies, yet there is a scarcity of research on how to optimally measure these factors. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a comprehensive tool for HCPs to document the contextual factors likely to influence the maintenance, development, and deployment of professional competencies.

Methods: We used DeVellis' 8-step process for scale development and Messick's unified theory of validity to inform the development and validation of the context tool.

Considering the Structured Oral Examinations Beyond Its Psychometrics Properties.

Decisions to set aside Structured Oral Examinations (SOE) are, almost invariably, based on their poor psychometric properties. However, considering the perspectives of the stakeholders might help us to understand its potential contribution. To explore this, we conducted focus groups and individual interviews with stakeholders: students, assessors, and administrators.

Quality of Narratives in Assessment: Piloting a List of Evidence-Based Quality Indicators.

Background & Need For Innovation: Appraising the quality of narratives used in assessment is challenging for educators and administrators. Although some quality indicators for writing narratives exist in the literature, they remain context specific and not always sufficiently operational to be easily used. Creating a tool that gathers applicable quality indicators and ensuring its standardized use would equip assessors to appraise the quality of narratives.

Assessing trainee's performance using reported observations: Perceptions of nurse meta-assessors.

Background: Educational and health care organizations who prepare meta-assessors to fulfill their role in the assessment of trainees' performance based on reported observations have little literature to rely on. While the assessment of trainees' performance based on reported observations has been operationalized, we have yet to understand the elements that can affect its quality fully. Closing this gap in the literature will provide valuable insight that could inform the implementation and quality monitoring of the assessment of trainees' performance based on reported observations.

The Definitions and Conceptualizations of the Practice Context in the Health Professions: A Scoping Review.

Introduction: Health care professionals work in different contexts, which can influence professional competencies. Despite existing literature on the impact of context on practice, the nature and influence of contextual characteristics, and how context is defined and measured, remain poorly understood. The aim of this study was to map the breadth and depth of the literature on how context is defined and measured and the contextual characteristics that may influence professional competencies.

Canadian general internal medicine residents' perception of a pedagogical tool of online cases in obstetric medicine.

Background: Sufficient exposure to rarer medical problems around pregnancy is a challenge during short rotations in obstetric medicine (OM). A Canadian research group created online clinical cases, the CanCOM cases, to overcome this.

Methods: We conducted an exploratory study to document the use and perceived utility of the CanCOM cases.

Harnessing a knowledge translation framework to implement an undergraduate medical education intervention: A longitudinal study.

Introduction: Implementation of evidence-informed educational interventions (EEI) involves applying and adapting theoretical and scientific knowledge to a specific context. Knowledge translation (KT) approaches can both facilitate and structure the process. The purpose of this paper is to describe lessons learned from applying a KT approach to help implement an EEI for clinical reasoning in medical students.

Eleven ways to get a grip on the implementation of remote administration of high-stakes assessments.

The COVID-19 pandemic rushed licensure and certification institutions, as well as many university programs, to integrate Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in their practices to allow for remote administrations of their exams independent of distancing measures. The Black Ice covered in this manuscript is the integration of ICTs to allow remote administration of high-stakes assessments in terms of its development, administration, and monitoring with the aim to promote the validity of score interpretation.

Validity as a social imperative: users' and leaders' perceptions.

Introduction: Recently, was proposed as an emerging conceptualization of validity in the assessment literature in health professions education (HPE). To further develop our understanding, we explored the perceived acceptability and anticipated feasibility of validity as a social imperative with users and leaders engaged with assessment in HPE in Canada.

Methods: We conducted a qualitative interpretive description study.

Stakeholders' perception on the implementation of Developmental Progress Assessment: using the Theoretical Domains Framework to document behavioral determinants.

Background: The widespread implementation of longitudinal assessment (LA) to document trainees' progression to independent practice rests more on speculative rather than evidence-based benefits. We aimed to document stakeholders' knowledge of- and attitudes towards LA, and identify how the supports and barriers can help or hinder the uptake and sustainable use of LA.

Methods: We interviewed representatives from four stakeholder groups involved in LA.

Narrative Assessments in Higher Education: A Scoping Review to Identify Evidence-Based Quality Indicators.

Purpose: Narrative comments are increasingly used in assessment to document trainees' performance and to make important decisions about academic progress. However, little is known about how to document the quality of narrative comments, since traditional psychometric analysis cannot be applied. The authors aimed to generate a list of quality indicators for narrative comments, to identify recommendations for writing high-quality narrative comments, and to document factors that influence the quality of narrative comments used in assessments in higher education.

Drivers of iPad use by undergraduate medical students: the Technology Acceptance Model perspective.

Background: Medical students need to acquire a continuously growing body of knowledge during their training and throughout their practice. Medical training programs should aim to provide students with the skills to manage this knowledge. Mobile technology, for example, could be a strategy used through training and practice.

COVID-19 as the tipping point for integrating e-assessment in higher education practices.

The COVID-19 pandemic provoked an urgency for many educators to integrate digital information and communication technologies in their educational practices. We explored how faculty members tackled the task of adapting their assessment practices during the pandemic to identify what is required to sustain and favour future quality development and implementation of e-assessment in higher education. Employing a qualitative descriptive approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews with thirty-one individuals six months into the COVID-19 pandemic.