The three Rs of written assessment: The JIPMER experience

Written assessment has stood the test of time and is widely practiced from elementary school to higher education. Medicine is not an exception and written exams are the main mode of assessing knowledge (cognitive domain) in formative and summative assessments. School education in India is much oriented towards the reproduction of knowledge rather than translation of knowledge. Hence, bright, curious, children are transformed to dull, indifferent parrots in school who get selected for various professional courses based on their ability to remember and reproduce facts. This concept of assessment is well conserved across different levels of education including medical education. The present assessment pattern in medical colleges, both undergraduate and postgraduate, maintains this status quo as we continue to expect students to cram stuff and reproduce it verbatim. This has also changed the way students learn the subject. Most of the students have now switched to third rated notes available in the market with only a very few reading standard textbooks. If we have to produce students who can analyze, think effectively, and treat patients appropriately, we need to change the way our students learn and the content of what they learn. The only effective way to do this is to change the way we assess them.