Operationalizing competency-based assessment: Contextualizing for cultural and gender divides.

Following current trends, educational institutions often decide to use a competency framework as an overarching structure in their assessment system. Despite the presence of a common understanding of how different examinations can contribute to the decision on attaining a particular competency, a detailed mapping of the data points appears to be a challenging area that remains to be explored. Faced with the newly emerged task of introducing the assessment of the attainment of UAE medical students against the EmiratesMEDs competency framework, Dubai Medical College for Girls (DMCG) attempted to operationalise the designed concept in the assessment system considering the cultural and gender divide.