Overview
The problem is that there are many new members on the admissions committee who will be reviewing applications for medical school as part of a process called the pre-admissions screening. There is no formal evaluation form or rubric given to these new members of the committee. Long-term members of the committee are physicians who have been in practice, have precepted medical students and have been active in medical education. They do not have a need for a formalized rubric. In addition, new software is coming out next admissions season and the committee members need to be able to access this software, read the applicants application, and rate it on the software utilizing a rubric. The proposed solution will be a combination of direct instruction and problem based learning. The instructional setting will be a workshop. Problem based learning will be utilized in small groups to help develop a rubric for evaluating candidates. These small groups will be a mix of new and more experienced committee members. After each rubric has been developed a composite rubric will be developed incorporating the most consistent attributes found in each small group rubric. Comparing the similarities and differences will provide topics for debate which will allow different points of view to be considered. After the consensus rubric is developed the group will work through a candidate and score the applicant together taking care to document evidence from the application that supports the score on the rubric. Then an experienced member will be paired with an inexperienced member. The inexperienced member will talk through their evaluation of a candidate and will receive feedback from the experienced member. A short presentation will be given on accessing the Webadmit software and step-by-step instruction sheets will be distributed. Each member of the committee will then access Webadmit and score an applicant before leaving the workshop.
Goals
- Be able to effectively utilize the Webadmit software for rating applicants for admission.
- Be able to work in a small group to develop a rubric for scoring an applicant utilizing prerequisites and minimum requirements for admission.
- Describe and defend characteristics found in an applicant’s application that make them a good fit for the school.
- Participate in the development of a composite rubric for screening applicants.
- Utilize the expertise of the more experienced members to aid the new committee member’s in learning how to evaluate applicants.
Objectives
1. By the end of the workshop the reviewer will be able to list the minimum requirements for admission to the school as well as the prerequisites for admission and document which parts of the application contain that data and how it is scored on the rubric.
2. By the end of the workshop the reviewer would be able to contribute at least three attributes to the development of a composite rubric for scoring applications and be able to effectively defend the attributes they chose. 3. By the end of the workshop, new admissions committee members will be able to list the main components of the school's mission statement and be able to describe which parts of the application they would use to rate the candidate’s degree of match with the mission statement as well as which specific attributes they would choose as evidence for this match. 4. By the end of the workshop the reviewer is able to describe a candidate who would be classified as a yes, high maybe, maybe or no in the pre-admissions screening and their classification would be deemed consistent with an experienced reviewer’s categorization more than 90% of the time. 5. The reviewer demonstrates the ability to successfully log on Webadmit, find their preadmission screening assignments and review the categories of the application utilizing the rubric by the end of the workshop. |