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Chapter Highlights
This chapter provides a general overview of the importance and principles of quality assurance (QA) of assessment in medical education and emphasizes the need for continuous quality improvement of assessment practices and processes.
QA is an inherent requirement and a process-oriented proactive approach to ensure the quality of assessment processes in medical education.
Well-established internal and external QA processes are essential to foster institutional effectiveness, maintain continuous quality improvement, and promote accountability.
QA of assessment processes empowers teaching staff to enhance the quality of the student learning experience and the “fitness for purpose” of graduates.
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ORIENTATION TO THE CHAPTER
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Assessment is used by medical education provider institutions to improve learning outcomes and ensure accountability for learning and teaching practices. Although assessment goals and responsibilities involve administrators, educators, and students; improving learning for students lies squarely in the hands of educators, whose responsibility is to develop valid and reliable assessment instruments that both drive learning and provide evidence to stakeholders, such as employers, of the quality of education provided. Societal expectations make it imperative that medical educators adopt robust quality assured assessment processes that are both fair and defensible. This chapter begins with a general overview of the importance, rationale, and principles of QA of assessment in medical education. Next, it explores approaches and mechanisms of ensuring QA, using examples and case scenarios. Finally, the chapter concludes by emphasizing the significance and need for continuous quality improvement of assessment practices and processes.
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Assessment is a fundamental part of educational planning and curriculum delivery. Assessment serves the needs of three major groups—leaners, assessors, and regulators—each group may have different needs and perspectives but all of them should be included in QA processes. Therefore, it is pertinent that assessment instruction provided to students must be of high quality. The quality of learning and teaching is an essential component of educational quality and is associated with learning outcomes [1]. Subject experts need to develop and engage in appropriate assessment programs and practices that send the right signal to students about what and how they should be learning [2,3]. Ultimately, assessment tasks should be aligned with the course objectives and represent the course’s intended learning outcomes [4,5], so that assessment reinforces learning the intended course outcomes
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Understanding this curriculum alignment may be challenging. Are assessment practices determined by teaching practices or are teaching practices determined by assessment practices? If the two are aligned in the initial design, then they interact and shape each other symbiotically. Where changes are made to only one, the result can be chaotic, with limited success. Case 1-1 is an example of an education provider who may well have had strong alignment between teaching and assessment practices, both rather “conservative” or “traditional.” Teaching was not integrated across departments, and it assessed a series ...