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IDEAL Consortium Workshop

The GSM looks forward to hosting a conference of national and international delegates in the medical academic fraternity in November of this year. As part of a commitment to enhance assessment of medical students as well as providing ongoing professional development opportunities, an IDEAL Consortium workshop will be held at the University of Wollongong on November 24th-25th,to produce quality written assessment items and to train staff to further develop their item writing skills. The International Database for Enhanced Assessments and Learning (IDEAL) Consortium, of which the GSM is a member, strives to promote and share quality assessment information and provides opportunity to communicate this across an international medical community. The GSM itself will be sponsoring a second component to this workshop exploring new and innovative tools for assessing senior students and medical trainees. Professor Brian Jolly from Monash University will present an afternoon workshop on Thursday, Nov 26th on the assessment of medical students and trainees in the workplace. Professor Bernard Charlin from the University of Montreal will present a full day workshop on Friday, Nov 27th on the Script Concordance Test (SCT) approach to testing clinical reasoning skills.

International and national experts will also be in attendance to present at the IDEAL Consortium Meeting including Susan Case as keynote speaker in the IDEAL Consortium Sessions . Susan, a psychometrician whom presently holds the position of Director of Testing at the National Conference of Bar Examiners, is the lead author of the NBME's text "Constructing Written Test Questions for the Basic and Clinical Sciences and is regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities in assessment of medical students. Expert facilitators and guests will also include Tim Neild, a physiologist particularly knowledgeable in the use of Modified Essay Questions; James Ware who is trained as a Surgeon and presently holds the title Professor of Medical Education at the University of Kuwait and Clarke Hazlett, who has expertise in psychometrics and recently retired as Professor of Medical Education at the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he founded the IDEAL Consortium. From our own GSM faculty, Nicky Hudson and Liz Farmer will also be sharing expertise and experiences for the delegates.

The workshops will be held over four days with the expected outcomes that all registrants have an opportunity to learn and explore innovative ways and tools to practically implement in their own assessments, and also providing a forum where delegates can benefit from a diverse pool of international knowledge and experience. Whilst the conference is a professional development opportunity for delegates it will also be a wonderful opportunity to showcase our school, university and the area to a national and international audience.

Further information regarding the conference, including registration details can be obtained by contacting Alissa Tran at atran@uow.edu.au