a Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne , Dean's Office Student Affairs , Cologne , Germany.
b Faculty of Educational Sciences , Centre for Educational Measurement at the University of Oslo (CEMO) , Oslo , Norway.
Med Teach. 2018 Nov;40(11):1123-1129. doi: 10.1080/0142159X.2018.1472370. Epub 2018 Jun 28.
Progress testing is a longitudinal assessment that aims at tracking students' development of knowledge. This approach is used in many medical schools internationally. Although progress tests are longitudinal in nature, and their focus and use of developmental aspects is a key advantage, individual students' learning trajectories themselves play, to date, only a minor role in the use of the information obtained through progress testing. We investigate in how far between-person differences in initial levels of performance and within-person rate of growth can be regarded as distinct components of students' development and analyze the extent to which these two components are related to performances on national licensing examinations using a latent growth curve model. Both, higher initial levels of performances and steepness of growth are positively related to long-term outcomes as measured by performance on national licensing examinations. We interpret these findings as evidence for progress tests' suitability to monitor students' growth of knowledge across the course of medical training. This study indicates that individual development as obtained by formative progress tests is related to performance in high-stakes assessments. Future studies may put more focus on the use of between-persons differences in growth of knowledge.
进展性测试是一种纵向评估，旨在跟踪学生知识的发展。这种方法在国际上的许多医学院校中都有使用。尽管进展性测试本质上是纵向的，其关注和利用发展方面是一个关键优势，但到目前为止，个别学生的学习轨迹本身在利用进展性测试获得的信息方面只发挥了次要作用。我们研究了个体间初始表现水平的差异和个体内增长率差异能否被视为学生发展的不同组成部分，并使用潜在增长曲线模型分析了这两个组成部分与全国执照考试成绩的相关性。较高的初始表现水平和较快的增长率都与以全国执照考试成绩衡量的长期结果呈正相关。我们将这些发现解释为进展性测试适合监测医学生在整个医学培训过程中知识增长的证据。本研究表明，形成性进展性测试获得的个体发展与高风险评估中的表现相关。未来的研究可能会更加关注知识增长方面的个体间差异的利用。
