Challenges to Provision of Final Year OSCE Assessment During COVID-19 Pandemic

Objectives: A UK-wide lockdown created multiple challenges to the provision of clinical teaching for undergraduate dental students. Dental students within a few months of gradation were most acutely affected. Utilisation of online learning rapidly adopted by academic institutions. A challenge for educators was to provide robust assessments for undergraduates who had already gained sufficient clinical competencies throughout their studies. Our aim was to compare the performance of a virtual OSCE used during the initial lockdown to a traditional OSCE provided prior to the Pandemic.
Methods: A virtual OSCE assessment was provided via the CANVAS online learning platform. This 5 stage linear OSCE was adapted from its traditional face-to-face format. This enabled the assessment to be undertaken electronically both remotely and securely. When compared, both the electronic and traditional assessments had many similarities including complexity, standard-setting and blue-printing. Both OSCEs assessed students’ history-taking, diagnostic and treatment planning skills. Differences included the need for assessment orientation training with CANVAS prior to the examination. Due to the international cohort of students undertaking the course, the online examination was time-limited over a 24 hr period to accommodate the wide dispersion of candidates.
Results: Format changes to the examination had little effect on student performance. The mean score for the remote assessment was 67.4% (SD=7.17) compared to 66.8% (SD-5.84) for the face-to-face assessment undertaken 1 year previously. Although students performed to a similar standard across the examinations, intra-station variations were observed between the 2 assessments. Students performed more strongly in history-taking tasks in the face-to- face examination. In the electronic examination students performed better at special investigation interpretation tasks.
Conclusions: The Canvas platform provided suitable means to assess students during the COVID restrictions. The electronic assessment was completely standardised with no intra-station variation. As with all assessments, the importance of robust design and standard setting is crucial.