Assignment Help on OSCE and Attitudinal Measurement

Part A - Test Instrument 

Assessment Methods and their Suitability in different Situations 

The students might be assessed by using different formats of examination, of which long essay, Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) and oral exams hold substantial importance. However, the suitability of any specific format might vary based on the situation and need of assessing specific skills and knowledge of students.  

The long essay format examination can be used in the situation when examiner wishes to judge the ability of student to indicate understanding of detailed concepts (Chalhoub-Deville, 1995). The use of this type of assessment is suitable when students are required to make comparisons of different relationships or when they have to use concepts for reaching at specific conclusion through clarification of connections among different factors (Cook & Hatala, 2016). For instance, this format might allow the student to provide detailed justification of original stance. In clinical settings, a specific student might want to justify the relationship of different factors which combine to define psychiatric state of specific patient and in order to explain the scenario as well as relationship of factors, long essay format exam is considered as most suitable. The critical thinking and evaluative skills are integral for effectively performing in such exam and thus it can help in assessing the ability of student to provide opinions for convincing evidences (Deeley & Bovill, 2017). Additionally, the students also gain opportunity to combine diverse evidence about particular subject or issue and this piece of writing might be useful for other people in understanding of specific issue (Downing & Yudkowsky, 2009). The examination of higher level learning skills is mainly carried out through essay questions. As highlighted in Bloom’s taxonomy, the assessment of synthesizing and evaluative skills of students is carried out through essay questions and thus in situations where other forms of tests can be used, it is better to avoid essay format examination (Ghaderi et al., 2015).  

The MCQs are considered as type of objective type test, where factual knowledge of students is tested. In such examination, stem (question) is used along with options of correct answers as well as of distractors (Malau-Aduli & Zimitat, 2012). Based on the Bloom’s taxonomy, the ability of student to know and comprehend can be best assessed by making use of MCQs assessment format (Mukherjee & Lahiri, 2015). These skills are considered as lower order cognitive skills and assess the ability of student to recall any discrete facts. In clinical settings, this types of examination is used when students are assessed for recalling the symptoms of specific diseased as well as most suitable medicinal formulas (Malau-Aduli & Zimitat, 2012). This type of information mainly requires good cognitive skills, in contrast to creative or evaluative skills. Additionally, students are also provided with accessible course material and such test helps in assessing their ability to draw key concepts from the course. With such assessment method, timely examination of student’s learning is carried out and thus they might be provided feedback to adapt the ways through which their learning can be improved (Musa, Ahmed & Shaheen, 2018). Thus, in such circumstances, MCQs can be considered as most suitable assessment type.