The MB BS Curriculum Management III: A Paradigm of basic educational concerns.

Abstract

Introduction:In the frst two articles on curriculum management the author addressed the planning & the implementationphases of the medical curriculum. This third & last part of the series will focus on standard-setting ofstudents’ assessment and two main aspects of evaluation; namely feedback for curriculum development andfeedback for management & development of educational resources.1. Standard-settingIn the previous section (7), we discussed setting of an examination to address a set of objectives or learningoutcomes. The section also stressed the depth of knowledge to be aimed at for the group of studentsconcerned. However, this is not enough to set a standard by which pass/fail decisions can be mode. It iscommon practice to have a pass standard of 50% or a midpoint of a grade point scale as determined byregulations.It cannot be assumed that every examination paper or any other method of students’ assessment willautomatically have a 50% pass mark. A rough method would be to scan the questions and make surethat at least 50% of the questions aim at “must know” or “must do” learning outcomes. This ensures thatminimum pass level student can be picked out by the examination. More elaborate methods of standardsetting are available; whereby the pass mark is set before the examination is administered. This is referredto as “criterion - referenced” standard-setting. One of the more commonly used methods is what is knownas the “Angoff method” after its author. This method entails that a group of at least two examiners agreeon the pass mark of each item in an examination. If these marks are added up and the arithmetic mean iscalculated, the result would be the pass mark for the whole paper. The result may be 40% in a diffcultpaper or 60% in a less searching paper. Evidently these marks will have to be rescaled according to gradingsystem of the institution.