Study of the impact of objective structured laboratory examination to evaluate students’ practical competencies

ABSTRACT

Measurement of multiple competencies of students is getting more emphasis in undergraduate education validating the need for work-ready graduates. We developed the objective structured laboratory examination (OSLE) to measure the practical competencies of final year biomedical science students. This paper analyses the impact of OSLE on students’ practical competencies and the utility of OSLE. A total of 63 students (89%) from two different cohorts (BM1 and BM2) were recruited to give feedback on OSLE using a structured questionnaire under three themes viz., prior learning, administration and feedback. Open feedback was obtained from both faculty and students. Reliability of different components of the questionnaire was established by Cronbach’s α. Correlation between OSLE score and cGPA (cumulative grade point average) of each student was calculated using Pearson correlation coefficient. Cronbach’s α value for all the three domains ranged from 0.6 to0.9. Students’ perception of OSLE was generally positive with a median of 4 in a to 5-point Likert scale (4 = agree). Feedback from students and faculty indicated that OSLE motivated the students to improve their practical skills. Interestingly, there was no correlation between OSLE score and cGPA of the students reiterating the different competency sets used by skill assessment versus knowledge assessment.

KEYWORDS:

• Practical competencies
• objective structured laboratory examination
• competency-based education
• biomedical science students
• laboratory skill assessment

Disclosure statement

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the International Medical University under the Grant IMU 414-2018.