J Dent Educ. 70(5): 500-510 2006
© 2006 American Dental Education Association
Educational Methodologies |
Grading Dental Students in a "Nongraded" Clinical Assessment Program
Mohsen Taleghani, D.M.D.;
Eric S. Solomon, D.D.S., M.A.;
William F. Wathen, D.M.D.
Key words: clinical evaluation, nongraded assessment, grade point average, competency-based dental education, quality assessment, quantity assessment
Submitted for publication 05/17/05;
accepted 01/03/06
This article details how Baylor College of Dentistry (BCD) merges graded and nongraded aspects of student assessments into grade point averages (GPAs); explains the use of its assessment tools to evaluate students, faculty, and curriculum simultaneously; and calls for continuous progress and quality improvement toward educational excellence among all levels of the oral health education community. "Nongraded" student assessments at BCD are only applicable to preclinical and chairside activities that involve direct patient care. We further summarize how we have attempted to improve the accuracy of grading while providing objective numeric grades to measure student performance and generate a class rank. We suggest that faculty evaluation and curricular change require appropriate evaluation methods and continuous quality improvement based on the chosen assessment methodologies. We then summarize how we merge graded and nongraded assessments into a final student evaluation that realistically discriminates among students’ performance and present our numeric-to-letter grade conversion table. We conclude that 1) multiple strategies are required, available, and adequate to provide graduates with the numerical GPAs demanded by postdoctoral programs and that 2) continuous quality improvement among all levels of the oral health education community should be vigorously pursued by administration and faculty alike.
Copyright © 2006 by the American Dental Education Association.
