1. 15 th May 2008 Virtual Patients as a Tool for Assessment Presented to Medbiquitous Conference 2008 Presented by Emily Conradi, e-Projects Manager Jonathan Round, Senior Lecturer and Consultant Paediatrician

2. Why use VPs for assessment? o Clinical reasoning skills; o Patient management; o Applicability of knowledge; o Consistent feedback; o Online.

3. o Validity o Feasibility o Reliability The perfect method of assessment?

4. Models of VPs for assessment o Branching VPs: Scenario Adapts to reflect choices o Three models of AVPs: –Model 1: Ranking

6. Models of VPs for assessment o Branching VPs: Scenario Adapts to reflect choices o Three models of AVPs: –Model 1: Ranking –Model 2: Ranking with increasing difficulty

8. Models of VPs for assessment o Branching VPs: Scenario Adapts to reflect choices o Three models of AVPs: –Model 1: Ranking –Model 2: Ranking with increasing difficulty –Model 3: Scenario adapts

10. Trialling VPs for Assessment o Third year Graduate Medicine –Six cohorts of 12 (n=73) o Formative assessment o Four Paediatric cases o Five decision points per case –Between 4 and 8 choices o Blind scoring

13. Feedback

14. o 97% felt they had time to complete the assessment o 96% felt the VP was user-friendly o 86% reported no problems using the technology – Frustration with lack of ‘back’ button

15. General Comments o much more interesting to have a scenario than standard MCQs o absolutely lovely, great fun and much more interactive then dry paper questions o great way to be assessed and to self-assess o it's great practise and good way to test learning o don't like that you can't go back and look at previous information o requires both general and specific knowledge o i hope more exams will be carried out like this in the future o the more practical experience I have, the better I will perform!

16. AVP Performance against exam scores

17. Case Comparison

18. Conclusions o Validity o Feasibility o Reliability

19. Future Work o More comprehensive trial; more iterations; o More, shorter VP cases; o Different VP cases; o Different assessment models.

20. Thank you Dr Jonathan Round jround@sgul.ac.uk Emily Conradi econradi@sgul.ac.uk