Center for Educational Development and Research

In 2006, two urban universities started a new 6-week, residential program designed to provide a pipeline of qualified disadvantaged students to medical or dental school. Using both qualitative and quantitative techniques, this paper describes an iterative self-study process in which discrepancies in perceptions on program objectives held by students and faculty were detected. Analysis of interviews and a focus group with faculty resulted in eight program objectives. Faculty and students rank-ordered seven of these according to importance using pair-wise comparisons. Although they agreed that “skill building” was the most important program objective, students and faculty differed significantly on others. Some of these differences were attributed to inadequate communication about the program.

Self assessment accuracy is an essential precursor to the development of self-directed learning- a desired goal of medical education. The purpose of this study was to determine medical students’ long term accuracy of performance prediction, evaluated in the context of formative assessments designed to provide practice for the summative assessment. Students were asked to predict their performance on the final exam over six formative assessments and at the end of the final exam. Students’ confidence levels were predictive of near assessments, but were uncorrelated with final exam performance. Moreover, the ratings were stable over time. These findings are discussed in context of medical students’ approach to learning in the second year of medical school.