Customized Assessment Services
Overview
The NBME supports flexible, efficient construction, administration, scoring and score reporting of customized examinations. The web-based Customized Assessment Services (CAS) program allows medical school faculty to create an examination tailored to local curriculum. A large, high quality pool of secure items assembled from the NBME basic science subject exam bank covering topics commonly taught in basic science coursework is available. Design exams for integrated courses, end-of-year evaluations, problem-based learning cases or other educational objectives. CAS now also offers pre-designed organ system blueprints to use as “starters” when building integrated course tests.
Build and Preview an Examination in Four Steps
The main menu of the CAS test construction menu is displayed below:
click to enlarge
Score Reports and Feedback
The NBME generates both total test percent correct scores and locally scaled scores for the total test and individual content areas defined during the test construction phase. Scores are scaled to a mean of 70 and a standard deviation of 8 for the local examinee group. Other performance feedback includes summary statistics, a graphical performance profile for each examinee and item analyses available in three formats: an interactive online version, a PDF document, and a downloadable file. All show item statistics for comparison with a USMLE Step 1 reference group.
A full description and samples of the score report components are available in the Customized Assessment Services Information Guide 
.
To schedule an informational webcast, including a live demo, contact us at customtest@nbme.org
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Associate Dean of Curriculum
