(938) ASSESSMENT OF CRITICAL ANALYSIS COMPETENCY IN FIRST YEAR DENTISTRY STUDENTS USING A SELF-EVALUATION TOOL

摘要

Background. Critical analysis competency is essential to develop successful life-long learning skills.However, its assessment and evaluation may be complex and it difficult to standardize across thediverse disciplines in health sciences. We are developing a tool to evaluate this ability objectively andstandardized for an interdisciplinary learning context in Higher Education.Methods. Students (n=73) underwent a 30 short-assay question test in Philosophy Anthropologysubject in first year dentistry course. A week after the examination students were returned a copy ofhis/her examination paper together with a marking script for each question. Then, the students markedtheir own paper in accordance to the script and the lecture notes and were required to provide anumerical mark within the 0-to-10 point range. Data collected were compared with the marks given bythe lecturer in charge of the subject to identify (1) the correlation and (2) clustering of the selfevaluationmarking. Data were also compared with the final assessment test.Results and Discussion. Poor correlation (r2 = 0.1353) was observed between the student's marks andthe real marks, suggesting deficient critical analysis competency (somehow not unexpected in firstsemester in first year students). In addition, we observed a large number of students (26%) giving ascore much higher than the real mark (region above-left of identity line) and a second cluster ofstudents (15%) giving a lower marks than the real marks located in the top-right region but below theidentity line. This suggest two different approaches to critical analysis: the first group overvalues theiranswers and avoids the negative evaluation. The second group of students penalizes itself givinglower than real marks, eventhough their real marks are very high. Lastly, there is a "precision band"with the majority of students (59%) who deviate little (around 25%) from the real mark and are close tothe identity line. However, a improvement in the correlation was observed in the final assessment test(r2=0.34 ) suggesting a improvement of the acquisition of this competency.Conclusions. This tool was able to identify two differentiated clusters of students lacking objectivecritical analysis ability to assess their own work. The validation of this tool may open new ways toevaluated and compare cross-sectional competences, identify deficiencies in the curriculum deliveryand possible interventions to correct them, including the student reflective learning capacity.