Update on Web-Based Examinations and Pilot Projects
Date Posted: July 10, 2009
NBME Self-Assessments
Since the inception of the NBME Self-Assessment Services in 2003, medical schools and other institutions involved in medical education have been able to purchase vouchers for their students, faculty, or others who may be preparing to take USMLE or who want to become familiar with USMLE structure and content. These prepaid vouchers are then used to request an assessment. Although the medical school distributes these prepaid vouchers to students, it was not possible for the school to track usage of the vouchers or to access individual student performance feedback.
In early November 2008, the voucher system was enhanced to allow institutions which purchased vouchers to access a webpage through which the vouchers can be retrieved and tracked. It also provides the capability to view the performance feedback for those who redeem the vouchers and complete a self-assessment. Click here for more details.
Currently, individuals who take self-assessment exams receive an overall score report and performance profiles in the discipline areas covered by the examination. The NBME does not provide correct answers to the test items. Surveys of students and faculty members indicate that the NBME could greatly improve the usefulness of the self-assessment program if enhanced feedback were provided.
The NBME will give students the opportunity to review incorrectly answered test questions without providing correct answers and to review the amount of time spent on test items. NBME will phase in this feature on one form each of the Comprehensive Basic Science and Clinical Science self assessment examinations and will monitor the impact on usage before expanding this feature to additional forms of the exams. It is anticipated that this enhancement may become available in early summer 2009.
The NBME is also planning to enhance the performance profiles for those who take more than one self-assessment. Currently, the performance profile provides an overall assessment score and graphically displays the relative strengths and weaknesses in general content areas as horizontal bars. The enhanced profile would also display a performance bar for each content area that shows progress over multiple testing sessions.