Progress test Feedback system (ProF)

Objective
The ProF project was set up to develop a system that enables students and staff to receive demand driven, longitudinal, web based feedback on the outcomes of the interuniversity Progress Test in Medicine (iPGT).

Background
The progress test measures, at regular intervals, the knowledge of all students at graduation level. In this way information is obtained about the development of each medical student’s overall medical knowledge and the knowledge for different subdomains. This information can be helpful in reflecting on achieved and desired progress in knowledge development during the curriculum. Information collected over a number of years and institutions can reveal trends in knowledge development thereby offering insight into competence development during the curriculum not only for individual students and teachers but also for medical schools. These insights can be used not only to improve students’ learning behaviour but also to improve the curriculum. In order to achieve this it is crucial that information is easily accessible.

During the past two years the medical schools of Maastricht, Groningen, Nijmegen and Leiden collaborated in a project aimed at increasing the formative value of interuniversity progress testing by developing a system that uses ICT for transparent, demand-driven, longitudinal feedback.
The collaboration has resulted in the Progress test Feedback (ProF) system. This web based system offers students, teachers and staff of the participating medical schools the possibility to view the outcomes of (a series of) progress tests online.

The ProF system offers a user friendly tool to access the rich source of information about the development of knowledge and competence that is offered by progress testing. Strengths and weaknesses of individual students as well as the entire student population and curricula can be timely identified and addressed if necessary.

Feedback
In the ProF system, feedback refers to quantitative information on overall test scores and subdomain test scores (by discipline or category).

This information is momentaneous (scores on one particular test), longitudinal (development of scores over a series of tests) or predictive (predicted scores on future tests). Individual student scores are available (individual feedback) but also aggregated scores for a group of students (aggregated feedback).
ProF uses progress test results and other data stored in the VOSYS database.
Currently, students at the participating medical schools take four interuniversity progress tests every year. Following each test the results are added to the results of previous tests stored in the VOSYS database. At a set time after additions have been made to the VOSYS database, the ProF database is updated from the VOSYS database and the updated feedback can be accessed by users. Between updates, the content of the ProF database remains unchanged.

Currently feedback is limited to the Bachelor phase (years 1-3). As soon as uniform regulations for the Master phase are in place, ProF will be changed to provide feedback for that phase as well.