A college-wide assessment management system in an integrated medical curriculum

The objective of this research is to design and develop an online college-wide assessment management system for medical schools. This involves relational database design as well as user process flow design. These two design charts were developed with careful consideration of user requirements. The system has been used for over 400 assessments in less than three years. An integrated curriculum can benefit from an assessment management system by creating a growing question bank and delivering assessments electronically. Specifically by collecting and storing tagged questions, delivering assessments, collating and disseminating results including question psychometrics, giving feedback to learners, giving feedback to question writers, and finally by collecting tags (metadata) for each question which allows for comparison of grouped questions (e.g. by theme) and automatically generating assessments based on selected mctadata criteria. Both learners and teachers can benefit from such a system by getting proper feedback on performance. Medical educators as well can benefit by optimizing both managerial and educational aspects of assessments. Keeping in mind that information gathering and interaction with eventual users is vital to the accurate and appropriate design of the system, it is possible to develop a secure online assessment management system for medical schools which satisfies the needs of assessment management and delivery and is earnestly used and accepted.