Abstract
BackgroundSelf-assessment is a mandated educational requirement for use in dental undergraduate programmes. It is weakly supported for use in early clinical training and studies are criticized for the conceptual and methodology shortfalls. The aim of the study was to compare the alignment of student self-assessment to both staff assessment and written exams in early clinical training using an educational approach.MethodsIn 2014-2015, 55 third-year dental students completed three educational sessions comprising of (a) classroom teaching (lecture, video) with post-lesson written exam and (b) clinical activity with student self-assessment, staff assessment and student reflection. An intra-individual analysis approach, staff validation, and student scoring standardization were implemented. Cognitive (clinical competency) and non-cognitive (professionalism) items were separated in the analyses.ResultsThere were medium correlations (Spearman’s rho, r) between student self-assessment and staff assessment scores for cognitive items (r, 0.32) and for non-cognitive items (r, 0.44) for all three combined sessions. There were large correlations for individual sessions. Compared to the post-lesson written exam, students showed small correlation (r, 0.22, 0.29) and staff showed medium correlation (r, 0.31, 0.34) for cognitive and non-cognitive items. Students showed improvements in their mean scores for both cognitive (t-test; p > 0.05) and non-cognitive items (t-test; p = 0.000). Mean scores of students were not different statistically from that of staff (p > 0.05).ConclusionsStudents may adequately act as self-assessors at the beginning of their clinical work in periodontology. Self-assessment may potentially improve the clinical performance. Self-assessment may be nurtured through clear guidelines, educational training strategies, feedback and reflection leading to better evaluative judgement and lifelong learning.
Highlights
Self-assessment is a mandated educational requirement for use in dental undergraduate programmes
Development of self-assessment skills has been a purported competency goal of every education programme where competency was defined as the ability to self-assess [6]
These students were at their respective times registered for an introductory clinical periodontology course at the start of clinics at the School of Dentistry, Faculty of Medical Sciences, St Augustine Campus, The University of the West Indies (UWI), Trinidad and Tobago
Summary
Self-assessment is a mandated educational requirement for use in dental undergraduate programmes. It is weakly supported for use in early clinical training and studies are criticized for the conceptual and methodology shortfalls. The aim of the study was to compare the alignment of student self-assessment to both staff assessment and written exams in early clinical training using an educational approach. In a review study of self-assessment use in 11 health profession training programmes, there were reported cognitive benefits of ‘improvements in knowledge, performance, and self-analysis of performance’. Cognitive skills involved conscious intellectual effort exemplified by synthesis of memory, information processing, knowledge, intelligence, mathematical reasoning, motor skills and problem solving. Non-cognitive skills involved less conscious effort exemplified by motivation, integrity, responsibility, social skills, personality and the attitude [9]
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