Building a scalable ePortfolio based assessment strategy to connect clinical learning experiences: Preliminary lessons

The development of professional expertise in medicine requires a lifelong commitment to education. During university medical programs students encounter a wide variety of clinical experiences making it difficult to monitor and evaluate their development of clinical and professional competence. The use of a portfolio to collate feedback on their clinical performance can assist in making clearer connections between these experiences and their assessed performance of clinical competencies. Over the past year the University of Queensland’s medical program has instigated a project to refine their approach to assessment of student learning in the clinical learning environment which has involved planning for the adoption of an ePortfolio to manage the delivery of workplace-based assessments (WBAs). This paper outlines the design stages that have influenced this assessment initiative as well as the roadblocks that we have navigated during the early stages of this project. This provides an authentic account of our experiences and concludes with an overview of the key lessons that emerged during the educational development process.
Keywords: competency-based medical education, programmatic assessment, clinical competence, workplace-based assessment