EVALUATING PHARMACY STUDENTS ABILITY-BASED EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES USINGAN ASSESSMENT-CENTER APPROACH

This project focused on the assessment of four of the ability-based ed ucational outcomes identified in Background Paper II of the American A ssociation of Colleges of Pharmacy Commission to Implement Change in P harmaceutical Education: group interaction, problem-solving, written c ommunication skills and interpersonal communication skills. The object ives were to: (i) develop one assessment exercise to facilitate measur ement of each selected outcome; (ii) develop four complementary assess ment instruments; (iii) collect baseline data on student performance o f these outcomes using a sample of second-professional year students; (iv) provide mentoring feedback to students on their performance; and (v) determine attitudes of student participants toward the outcome abi lities, assessment exercises and the feedback process. An important co ncept operationalized in this study to achieve its objectives was that of an assessment center. An assess ment center is not necessarily a ' 'where,'' but more of a ''who'' and a ''what'' to facilitate assess me nts. Assessment exercises and instruments were developed and preteste d using an expert panel approach. Explicit evaluation criteria were de signed to ensure reliability among assessors. Cronbach's Alpha for the internal reliability of the instruments ranged from 0.81 to 0.91. Pea rson's Correlation Coefficients between raters were significant at the 0.01 level for three of the four instruments. Eight groups of four st udents were assessed during separate three-hour sessions. Students sel f-assessed their performances and each was evaluated by two assessors on all four exercises. Students later met individually with an assesso r to receive mentoring feedback on their performance. Results showed t hat students performed well on the exercises and believed their partic ipation in the project worthwhile. This study provides a foundation fo r expanded efforts to assess these outcome abilities both in and out o f the classroom.