Perception Regarding Formative Assessment among Indian Undergraduate MBBS Students – A Strategic Initiative towards Competency based Education

Abstract

Introduction: Evaluation in the form of formative or summative is fundamental in measurement of the students’ acquisition and understanding of the material covered. The goal of formative assessment (FA) is to monitor students learning and provide ongoing students feedback which in turn improves teaching and help finding strengths and weaknesses of students. Summative evaluation (SA) on the other hand is to evaluate students learning at the end of the instructional unit to compare students’ performance with some other standards. Objectives: To determine the students’ perceptions about the impact of formative assessment on the outcome of summative assessment in teaching learning process during the first year MBBS program. Materials and Methods: An observational study was conducted among the third semester MBBS students of North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences, Shillong, Meghalaya using a questionnaire to record the opinions and were rated using the 5 point Likert’s scale regarding the impact of FA on the SA and then the data was collected, analysed and interpreted. Results: Most of the respondents opined that FA helps the students in isolating specific weak areas. This study revealed that feedback from FA to the students is important to supplement and modify teaching by the teachers. Formative evaluation is important for student as it aids in targeting problem areas within their classes. Most of the students opined that FA helped them for deep learning and thus helped them in improving the result in SA. Conclusion: FA not only assesses students’ achievements but also enables them to recognize the areas in which they are having difficulty and to concentrate their future efforts on those areas. Adequate frequency of FA with immediate feedback is beneficial. The results of this study encourage the use of FA as an educational tool in all MBBS subjects for they have significant positive effects on learning as well as on SA in many ways.