OSCAR: OSCE Assessment And Reporting Database
MCP Hahnemann University
Abstract:
Medical students interact with standardized patients (SP's) in the Chick Education and Assessment Center during their first three years at MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine, in encounters designed to teach and or evaluate clinical skills OSCAR, (OSCE Assessment and Reporting) is a multi-user database system used by SP's to record their evaluations of student performance and by administrators to quickly generate administrative, statistical and academic reports.
OSCAR consists of three components:
OSCAR Patient was developed as a Web
client to enable other schools to use our system and to promote collaborative
research. Using the Web client, SP's
enter their evaluations into Web forms generated by Active Server Pages (ASP)
scripts that connect to OSCAR BackEnd.
The Web pages are served through MS Internet Information Server running
on the same Windows NT 4.0 server as OSCAR BackEnd. SP logon validation protects the data >from unauthorized
tampering. After logon, SP's can only
enter data for cases on which they have been validated and which are part of
currently enabled exams. To enter data,
the SP selects an examinee from a drop-down list, confirms the selection (a
digitized photo is displayed), and fills out the dynamically generated
checklist.
Employing OSCAR Administrator, the
program administrator configures cases, schedules exams, assigns examinees and
SP's and generates reports. The case
editing module allows assignment of existing questions to new cases, search for
question content, and addition of standard question sets to new cases. Reports that we have created so far include:
blank case checklist, filled case checklist for an examinee, descriptive case
statistics, case item analyses, exam reliability by question category, and
examinee scores standardized for case difficulty.
Because of OSCAR's modular design, there
is considerable flexibility in its configuration. Using a Web client, exams can
be run at remote or multiple sites simultaneously, from a single server. If there is a need to scale the database for
hundreds of simultaneous users, OSCAR BackEnd can be easily migrated to SQL
Server and/or to a separate server.
Benefit in Attending
Session:
OSCAR Administrator demonstrates how thoughtful form design can simplify the use of an application rich in features. OSCAR Web Client demonstrates the power of dynamically generated Web forms based on Active Server Pages.
PRIMARY AUTHOR'S
INFORMATION
Scott Beadenkopf, M.Ed.
MCP Hahnemann University
Information Resources and Technology
1505 Race Street, MS 644
Philadelphia, PA 19102
Telephone Number: 215-762-6497
Fax Number: 215-843-5495
E-mail Address: Scott.Beadenkopf@drexel.edu
Web Site: http://www.ceac.mcphu.edu/
CO-AUTHORS'
INFORMATION
Diane Cohen
Dennis Novack, M.D.
MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine
Division of Medical Education
2900 Queen Lane
Philadelphia, PA 19129
Telephone Number(s):
215-991-8539
215-991-8533
Fax Number(s): 215-843-5495
E-mail Address(es):