Documenting Learner Achievement

As learners progress through the continuum of health professions education, they attain a number of achievements. Evidence of these achievements may include examination scores, assessment of a level of competence in key domains, and progression through training milestones or expected levels of performance. During training learners may also be awarded entrustment of key professional activities which they may be allowed to perform without direct supervision.¹ Evidence of these achievements is key to tracing the learner’s professional progression, and yet that data remains locked in proprietary systems unavailable to the learner for professional development and improvement. The data are also unavailable to others seeking to evaluate learners as they progress through their careers.

The MedBiquitous Educational Trajectory Working Group’s work has focused on developing a solution for this problem. They have developed a draft specification for Educational Achievement data that would make information on a learner’s achievements portable across the continuum of his or her career. The specification would also enable the flow of contextual information about a learner’s educational experiences, including the instructional methods, assessment methods, and educational resources used in their education. The specification is designed for a broad range of healthcare professionals. One goal of the specification is to make available data that will help learner’s assess their strengths and weaknesses so they may work to improve. Other goals of the specification are to enable education related research and release of specific data to organizations and individuals at the learner’s request.

An example of educational achievement data showing the learner’s performance in relation to a set of competencies (in this example, the ACGME competencies).

The specification provides a common format for documenting the following kinds of achievement related data:

• Summary level assessment data, including competency-based scores reflecting the learner’s performance across a curriculum or program.
• Entrustment decisions made within a particular educational context.
• Assessment results, including results of assessments based on milestones or performance levels.
• Course grades.
• Links to competency frameworks showing the relationship between competencies and the curriculum.
• Tags indicating whether or not a course or event is interprofessional.
• Tags and recommended vocabularies for instructional methods, assessment methods, and resources used in events and courses.
• Portfolio content related to the educational achievements.
• Links to evidence used in entrustment decisions and assessment.
• To download the draft specification and schema, visit: http://medbiq.org/std_specs/specifications/index.html#ed_achievement

The work is supported by funding from the Association of American Medical Colleges and the National Board of Medical Examiners. They are working to develop an online portfolio system that would allow learners to store and connect to data for a variety of functions, including professional development and improvement.

¹ Ten Cate O, Scheele F. “Competency-based postgraduate training: can we bridge the gap between theory and practice?” Acad Med. 2007 Jun;82(6):542-7