46 | JADE
NAZIM ALI
In week 2, students tackle the investigative methods and diagnosis
of cancer. Students are expected to know the various terminologies
associated with cancer to be able to document and gather
information according to standard guidelines. Thus the set ILO
to this requires students to ‘Describe the basic classification of
tumours’. Analysing the ILOs of the PBL groups for week 2 shows
that 8 groups out of the 12 groups listed this as one of their ILOs.
Given that this equates to approximately 37% of the student cohort
who did not emphasise this ILO as core knowledge, a test item on
the topic becomes unfeasible. This clearly challenges the notion
of constructive alignment in the cancer module and becomes an
important point for me to consider in the redevelopment of the
module.
Assessments of the cancer module
Assessment is an integral part of a module and its importance is
recognised by the QAA which defines the purpose of assessment
as a tool: 1) to pr omote learning and 2) provide a means to measure
the extent of learning achieved by students against the ILOs
of a module. In accordance with the pedagogy of constructive
alignment, assessment materials should be designed in such way
which tells us how well students have succeeded in meeting the
module’s ILOs. Thus assessments should closely track the outcomes
of the curriculum in order to drive learning.
The assessment of the module is undertaken using a range of items
which includes written and practical work. Grounded in sound
medical educational research, the selection of the test items follows
the framework of Miller’s Pyramid (Miller 1990). As detailed in Figure
3, the ‘knows’ forms the base of the pyramid which tests students
factual knowledge. This acts as the foundation upon which clinical
competence can be built upon. At the second layer of the pyramid
students are expected to apply their acquired knowledge and this
can be examined by students’ ability to solve problems. The ‘knows’
and ‘knows how’ are deemed suitable categories for assessing Year
1 students utilising both written and practical assessments (Wass
2001). The top two layers: ‘shows’ and ‘does’ are designated for
students to demonstrate their competencies in simulated or actual
clinical settings and is generally assessed beyond Year 2.
Here I consider the extent to which the assessments of the module
aid students in their learning. My evaluation takes into account the
several criteria proposed by Brown (Brown 2004) as strategies to
transform assessment into a learning force. A critical factor is the
timing of assessment. Assessment of the module is undertaken