Introduction of Grading Rubrics to Egyptian Pharmacy Students’ Oral Assessments

Introduction of Grading Rubrics to
Egyptian Pharmacy Students’ Oral
Assessments
Dalia A. Hamdy
BPSc, MSc, PhD, RP(ACP), MRSC
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Pharmacy-Alexandria University
Egyptian Young Academy of Sciences (EYAS) Member
dr.daliahamdy@gmail.com

Oral Rubrics: Outline
• Oral Exams: Introduction
• Oral Rubric: Pharm-AlexU Experience
– Methodology
– Results
– Conclusions
– Limitations
– Updates
Oral Exam Rubrics-DH-April 2016 2

Oral Exams: Introduction
• Teachers (Facilitators)
help students develop and attain skills,
knowledge and attitudes.
• Assessors
certify their competency to join a discipline, a
community or a profession

• Higher Education Assessment methods
Should be
• aligned with both learning outcomes and activities
• utilized for educational improvement
which
students
learn best
under
what
condition

• In designing any exam for grading students
work
What is
being
Assessed?

• In designing any exam for grading students
work we need to
-Identify and clarify assessment standards and
criteria
-share such criteria with the student before-
hand

The Pharmacy program curricula
in the Egyptian Universities have
three exams for students’
assessment
1. Written exams (40-50%)
2. Practical exams (20-30%)
3. Oral exams (10-20%)

Oral exams
• Assessment in which students responds verbally to the
assessment tasks
• Enabling students’ assessment on all five cognitive
domains of Bloom’s taxonomy
• Limitation: concerns regarding subjectivity of oral exams,
specially with the involvement of a large number of
faculty staff members to handle the large number of
students present in the Egyptian Universities.

Oral exams

Oral exams
• Development & use of appropriate rubrics can
be used to
– decrease subjectivity
– Ensure consistency
across time and across graders
• Rubrics are scoring/evaluation tools that describe
the assessment performance expectations

Oral Rubric: Pharm-AlexU Experience
Methodology:
• The oral exam targeted areas were defined as
testing students’
1. knowledge
2. communication skills,
3. problem solving
4. critical thinking ability

Methodology:
• Study took Place in January-June 2013
• A rubric was developed

Methodology:

Methodology:
• An oral question or assessment was assigned to
test each item in the rubric.
• A sample of 42 pharmacy undergraduate
students, year 1 clinical program, were assessed

Methodology:
Assessor 1 Assessor 2
3 years of experience 25 years of experience
Applied the rubric -Did not apply the rubric
-Asked the students to go over the
questions in a provided sheet + other
questions
Tested 3-4 students at a time Tested 1 student at a time

Methodology:
-Grades were out of 15 by each assessor
-The mean of both grades would be used as
their final grade

Results:
Assessor 1
Assessor 2
5
3
Total Assessment time (h)
Assessor 1
Assessor 2
7
5
Average time per student (min)
-Assessor 1 required computer
assistance
-A developed excel sheet was used to
convert the rubric grades of each
criterion with its weight to real grades
for each student.

Results:
0 ≤2 ≥3 and ≤6
15%
44% 41%
The difference between the grades
given for the same student

Results:
-1
1
3
5
7
9
11
13
15
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
NumberofStudents
Grade
Assesor 1 Assesor 2
A histogram representing the distribution of
students grades by different assessors

Conclusion:
-Oral assessments are an essential component of
pharmacy students’ education
-They provide the students with an opportunity to
-use higher-order thinking skills
-communicate information to patients &
healthcare professionals

Conclusion:
-Points of strength:
1. The use of the mixed modules;
students are provided with a question sheet at the
beginning of the exam that they need to answer in
writing before they enter their oral assessment
2. The assessors involved in the exam are PhD
holders at the rank of at least Assistant professors

Conclusion:
-Points of strength:
3. each student is assessed by one assessor,
however, in small groups, as in clinical pharmacy
programs, the student is assessed by more than one
assessor.

Conclusion:
-Suggestion:
• Implementation of two additional steps to increase
the validity of the oral exam and decrease
subjectivity and inter-rater variability among
assessors.
First step: introduction of a grading rubric
Second step: train the examiners on rubric use specially
newly hired ones who lack experience

Conclusion:
-Advantage:
1. Better student assessment to include different
intellectual skills & better identification of learning
gaps
2. Decrease subjectivity and increase caliber of the
newly hired staff.
3. Better student satisfaction and less stress due to
clarity of assessment criteria

Conclusion:
-Limitation:
1. Time (experience & training)
2. Computer availability (updates)

Updates
implemented
in June
2014
&
2015

Thank You!
27
Oral Exam Rubrics-DH-April 2016

Introduction of Grading Rubrics to Egyptian Pharmacy Students’ Oral Assessments

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