Experience in developing and implementing the self-directed learning assessment tools among undergraduate medical students

Abstract

Background: The upcoming changes in digital technology have motivated health professionals to be lifelong learners and be updated with the recent trends. Self-directed learning (SDL) is one of the approaches for making undergraduate students health/ profession students lifelong learners. Moreover, the SDL approach allows learners to work in a team and gain social skills. The aim of the study was to develop and validate the facilitator and peer score sheet as an assessment tool for self-directed learning in the department of physiology, in the Indian context.

Method: The facilitator and peer score sheet was developed and validated by the Delphi technique. The score sheet was implemented as a pilot test for one of the SDL modules in the department of physiology for undergraduate students.

Result: Two Delphi rounds were conducted till the content validity index (CVI) for the Facilitator Score Sheet (FSS), for 10 items attained was 0.977 and a CVI of 0.90 for seven items was for the Peer Score Sheet (PSS). The Coefficient of Variance (CV) in FSS for items 6, 10, and 11 and in PSS for item 6 was more than 30, which is not acceptable, so the item needed to be modified or removed from the list.

Conclusion: Varied assessment strategies are required for the SDL module to attain academic gain as per cognitive and affective attributional gains. Although novel, the present scale needs to be modified after incorporating all the recommendations from different stakeholders before reusing it for the students' SDL module.

Keywords: Facilitator marked assessment; Peer assessment; Scale development; Self-directed learning; Undergraduate medical student.