THE STRUCTURED ORAL SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING-EVALUATION - ONE METHOD OFEVALUATING THE CLINICAL REASONING SKILLS OF OCCUPATIONAL-THERAPY AND PHYSIOTHERAPY STUDENTS

The Structured Oral Self-directed Learning Examination (SOSLE) is used to evaluate the clinical reasoning skills of occupational therapy (OT ) and physiotherapy (PT) students. It is an oral examination which eva luates a student's problem-solving ability, self-directed learning ski lls, knowledge level and self-assessment ability. The three parts of t he examination are conducted over a 24-hour period Validation of this instrument was carried out in two groups of OT and PT undergraduate st udents over two consecutive years (Year 1-n = 20) (Year 2-n = 18). Int er-rater reliability correlations varied from 0.61 to 0.78 the first y ear to 0.85 to 0.99 in the second year. The results obtained from the SOSLE were also compared to written and tutorial marks obtained in the same course. Pearson Correlation Coefficients (PCC) among mean SOSLE and two written paper scores ranged from 0.0-0.05 (Year 1) to 0.0-0.1 (Year 2). The PCC among the mean SOSLE and tutorial performance scores were 0.57 (Year 1) and 0.0 (Year 2). The results show that good agree ment between raters can be reached using this evaluation method Howeve r, the poor correlations between the SOSLE and the other methods of ev aluation may show that different skills are being evaluated. Further v alidity testing needs to be carried out to confirm that this tool is m easuring process oriented skills.