Step-by-step Guide to Create Competency-Based Assignments as an Alternative for Traditional Summative Assessment

Abstract

The sudden, prolonged COVID-19 lockdown has offered a great challenge to the medical school. This was not only at the level of learning and curricular design but also the level of assessment. The traditional summative assessment tools have collapsed during this Pandemic. Herein, we provide a five-step guide for designing competency-based E-assignments for summative assessment. Innovative assignments designs are crucially required for fair summative assessment of the medical students, mainly in the pre-clerkship phase. These need to be innovative, engaging, competency-based, well-designed, with defined rubrics, integrated, and interdisciplinary whenever possible. These should also enforce the concepts of self-assessment and student peer assessment. Including the students in the formulation and design enhances their self-motivation where there is no face-to-face education. Designing an assignment with a quality product as an outcome increases the students' enthusiasm and self-confidence. A brief case-study is included as an example. Teaching after the pandemic era will greatly change with inevitable changes in the dogmatic concepts. Formative and summative assessments are probably changing seats which might be sustained for some time post-COVID-19.

Keywords

• Assignment
• Assessment
• Student peer assessment
• Self-assessment
• Pandemic.