Marking

One of the main problem of being a Medical Lecturer is participating in assessment. Medical Lecturers were trained to become doctors first and foremost. Most of us have passion for teaching and research, but when it comes to curriculum building and assessment, we lack coaching and guidance. I attended a couple of courses on how to assess students, and was baffled at how much I didn’t know. To really learn the techniques, I was sure I will need about 4 weeks of coaching, without having to participate in clinical commitments to just be familiar, let alone master it. No wonder when it comes to assessing Medical Students to graduate them as doctors, even if the instruments were in place, often times it lacked standardisation. We then ended up not being discriminating enough in identifying the really poor candidates who did not deserve to pass, while picking up the cream to be promoted for distinctions. During exams, we as the examiners tended to trust our ‘gut’ feeling and let our emotions dictate our marking if we were not careful. For the last five years, I have never been really comfortable at being an examiner but in the last couple, I felt more at ease.

How about marking for written assessment? We can be terrible. I was marking essays today for the Masters exam and spent so much time trying to ‘deconstruct’ what was written and tried to be objective and methodical in distributing the marks. It was not easy, but things were getting better. Realising this, the steering and vetting committee decided to impress upon us examiners on the value of conforming to a marking scheme, while allowing some leeway for the candidates to express their thoughts. To help, the number of the examiners were also increased. For the 48 or so scripts we had to mark this morning, we had 12 examiners. In the end, we only had to scrutinise eight scripts before cross-checking them with a partner. At the end, everything was completed inside 2 and a half hours and I was already back at my Day Care by noon. I was dreading that the session would have extended until the afternoon. I was glad I was wrong.

Mock time!

As a teacher, the best feeling to have is when your students do well. In my field, I look to more than just passing exams, because frankly, they would have passed their exams without me teaching them. What's more important is being there when they needed help or guidance. After all, my students are adults. In fact, some of them were older than me.

Today, we held a mock exam for OSPE, one of the exam formats. The exam proper will take place next week and everyone was pretty jittery about it already. I was really pleasantly surprised that all the 15 candidates turned up to take the mock. Truly guys, that means a lot. They'll probably still pass the exam without the mock but I'm sure they will find it helpful for their preparation.

All the best!

Exam Day

I was stuck outside my own house in the rain again. This time, with Celcom signal deserting me. Stuck in the car and can't call out. I think there was something wrong with the transmitter. No signals! So twidling my thumb in the car while listening to some podcast.

I spent the day examining all day. Total of 6 hours examining can do your head in. Rather tired but I still have an order of business to attend. I have to get Habibah her wedding present. With the rain this heavy, I may have to ask Anita to do the buying tomorrow. I was expecting a huge clinic tomorrow and with Edmund and Habibah away, things were going to be tight. Straight after work, we will be leaving for Melaka. And the boys were really looking forward to that.

So it really is a toss up between going out or staying in. A man got to what a man got to do!

Invigilating - Day 1

Spent the morning invigilating the Final MBBS Exam at Perak Medical College. Similar to what I did last year. It turned out that one of the chap I was invigilating with last year was currently the Deputy Dean. So I spent some time this morning in his office before being introduce to the Dean. Proper stuff!

The exam darted without a hitch. There was not to be any major corrections, all the paper work were in order, the students all turned up on time. I was still not getting used to how different the academic building look here compared to UM. But I supposed the UM building were from a different era.

Examinations finishing soon. Have to figure out what to do for the afternoon.

By the way, Park Ji-Sung scored our winner just after I wrote the entry last night. And then Chelsea only drew with Blackburn. Game on!

What I was up to today

It was a long day for me today since I had to get to UKM very early. I was involved in the Masters of Medicine Examinations held over there. I arrived there late due to traffic. After briefings and preparation, we were ready to kick off with the exams proper.

We were lucky this time around since we at UM were not hosting for this diet. The part II were held in UKM. The part Is boys and girls were not so lucky. They had to make their way to Kubang Kerian for their clinicals. Some of my colleagues also flew off earlier in the week to examine there. It was the first time such arrangements were made. Previously USM hold their own clinical examinations for their candidates with the examiners coming from KL. The candidates from both UKM and UM will alternate between the two venues, often one centre doing part I and part II at the other. We were yet to find out whether the new arrangement is better or not. A meeting will be held later to discuss that.

It looks like the Masters program will be going through a period of transition in the near future. We are taking steps to change the marking system for the MCQ. No longer are they marked true or false with negative marking system. We are transitioning into the best of five answers, streamlining with the MRCP. Unfortunately, to get there will involve replacing much of the questions from our bank. That's going to be hard work.

Another change would be the inclusions of other parties into the fold. It looks like UiTM are interested in building up a post-graduate program similar to the Masters, and will be affiliated into the conjoint board once the plans are up. Maybe UPM will also follow suit, but I am yet to hear anything of that as yet.

After finishing my examinations, I rushed back to PPUM to quickly make sure that the final years have submitted their bounded thesis. All except one did it. I just hope that the last one do prior to the Board Meeting at 10 am tomorrow.

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