Journal of Dental Medicine

Background and Aims: The objective of this study was the development of a checklist for assessment of students’ clinical skills in the clinical oral medicine. The second aim was the assessment of stake holders’ satisfaction of this checklist in comparison to the routine global rating method.

Materials and Methods: The checklist was developed in an expert panel sessions and the validity and reliability of checklist were assessed by CVI and test-retest method, respectively. All students (n=66) were assessed in 2 groups, one with developed checklist and another with global rating. At the end of the session, the satisfaction’s level of staff and students were analysized using Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney test and the mean scores of students were analysized using Paired T test.

Results: Content validity index (CV I) of checklist was 0.88. Reliability of checklist confirmed with high correlation coefficient (0.9). Staffs’ satisfaction had no significant difference between the two methods
(Wilcoxon P=0.06). The mean score of students who assessed by checklist was higher than global rating with no significant differences (P=0.06).

Conclusion: Regarding the higher students’ satisfaction from checklist and more attention to component of assessment and more objectivity of this method and also higher score in checklist, it seems that the use of a checklist is more proper method for assessing the students’ clinical skills.

Background and Aims: Selecting the appropriate education evaluation method and the effects of this choice according to different fields of medical sciences, is one of the current priorities of medical education. Therefore, the aim of this study was to design a checklist for evaluating the practical skills of dental students and to get compared with the global ranking method.
Materials and Methods: A checklist was developed for the assessment of clinical skills of the practical pediatric course according to an action research method. 32 students were evaluated by the checklist method and 32 students were evaluated by the conventional global rating method (sampling was based on available sample).  Faculty staff and students’ satisfaction regarding the two methods were reported by a 6-scaled measure and statistically analyzed by Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test. The students' scores by the two methods were subjected to paired t test for comparison.
Results: The students were more satisfied with the checklist method (P=0.003). The faculty staff considered a greater ability of the checklist method to differentiate between the students (P=0.03). However, in terms of ease of use and suitability, most faculty staff preferred the traditional method (P=0.02). In other cases, there were no significant differences in the views of students and faculty staff towards the two methods.
Conclusion: In the present study, both Checklist and global rating methods were valuable for evaluation, although due to the greater satisfaction of students and faculty staff with the developed checklist method, the possibility of identifying the weak points leading to decreased scores and better assessment of capabilities, this checklist can be used for evaluation instead.