University of Virginia School of Medicine
Curriculum Committee
Minutes – 05.20.10

Pediatric Conference Room, 4:00 p.m.

Present (underlined) were: Gretchen Arnold,  Robert Bloodgood, Megan Bray, Donna Chen, Eugene Corbett, Thomas Gampper, Wendy Golden, Donald Innes (Chair), Keith Littlewood, Veronica Michaelsen, Mohan Nadkarni, Chris Peterson, Jerry Short, Linda Waggoner-Fountain, Bill Wilson,  Mary Kate Worden,  John Hemler, Christina Portal,  Guest: Jim Martindale, Debra Reed (secretary)  

1. Clarification of Fourth Year clinical Elective Evaluations (10/13/10).  The Committee was unanimous in requiring that all evaluations must have a narrative evaluation and that the narrative should contain the salient factors that warranted the assessment.
   
   
2. Student Assessment Community Report.  Jim Martindale delivered a new draft of the Student Assessment Community’s report on testing guidelines in the Next Generation curriculum (See attached). The committee had many questions and suggestions.
   
   

   CPD – summative exams in each system include CPD questions – separate CPD grades will be determined and they will become a part of the final CPD grade. Summative exams will be all multiple choice questions.  They are, however, not the only component of the grade students will receive, so narrative exams or exam components could be used as well, e.g. SIM questions. The case tool might also be modified to provide a narrative examination.  Whether the online testing system and the case tool can be linked in one exam was questioned.  Jim Martindale will look into this.  Some on the committee questioned the decision to ban “negative” phrased questions and the Committee agreed that recommended limited use of such questions was preferable to a complete ban. The system leaders along with an assessment team in each system will ultimately determine whether all threads have been proportionately covered in the exam. Deadline were adjusted slightly - The system leader will submit the entire test to the administrative staff well in advance of the scheduled test (~3 months). The need for relevant thread leaders to meet with system leaders and other system instructors to develop test questions will be necessary to create test questions that encompass multiple threads. The committee discussed the recommended amount of on-line questions to be answered by the students in a specific (3 or 4 hour) time period.  Early in the curriculum more time might be allowed but by the end of the systems, question numbers per hour should more closely resemble the NBME exams.  The increased use of clinical vignettes on the NBME exams, will decrease the number of questions per hour in the future and this will be taken into considering in designing our summative exams as well

3. Neurology Clerkship Annual Internal Review was distributed to the Committee.

Donald J. Innes, Jr., M.D.
dmr