The Benefits of Using a Rubric in Pediatric Radiology Resident Education

Abstract

Residency and fellowship programs must provide objective assessments of these 6 competencies. Because faculty evaluation of residents is difficult and often subjective, we have searched for a more tangible method of assessment. The standard method of testing in medical education is a multiple-choice examination, useful in assessing a resident’s medical knowledge but not the other competencies. Rubrics, although not well known in medical education, are widely used in primary, secondary, college, and graduate education for the assessment of student work in project-based learning [2,3]. In project-based learning, students create something new and use critical thinking skills. A rubric is a scoring tool that lists the objectives and criteria for a project and clearly articulates the gradations of quality for the project or assignment. Benefits of rubrics include goal clarification and specific student assessment [4]. We have implemented a rubric in our pediatric radiology rotation. One purpose of this report is to describe our experience using a rubric for a resident teaching file case assignment.