Bahiana hosts workshop - Latin America Grants - LAG on Programmatic Student Assessment

The Institutional Program for Teacher Development (PRIODD) promoted, on August 2nd and 3rd, at Campus Brotas, the workshop on Programmatic Assessment and Student Assessment Systems within the Latin America Grants Project (LAG), which is supported by the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). The activities were coordinated by the professors of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo (USP)/Ribeirão Preto, Dr. Valdes Bollela and Dr. Marcos Borges.

The activity was attended by around 40 professors from various undergraduate courses and members of the internal evaluation committees, course coordinators and pedagogical supervisors. The activities were also accompanied by the dean of Bahiana, Prof. Dr. Maria Luisa Carvalho Soliani.

The meeting consisted of one of the activities developed by the Teacher Development (DD) project for the programmatic evaluation of students in undergraduate health courses in Brazil, which has been taking place since March 2019, a project selected and financed by the NBME, with duration of 24 months and an initiative of USP/Ribeirão Preto. It is a collaborative project, which involves several institutions that offer the Medicine course.

"Bahiana was invited by the Faculty of Medicine of USP/Ribeirão Preto to participate in the project and we are in the process of devising a new form of evaluation", explains the professor of the Medicine course and member of the Internal Evaluation Committee, Dr. Ieda Aleluia, who participated , together with Prof. Dr. Marta Menezes, of the inclusion process of the Bahiana in the consortium of the LAG project and the first activity of the LAG program in Ribeirão.  

According to Professor Dr. Valdes Bollela, the methodology proposes a new strategy to combine different assessment instruments that provide more security for the school and for the teacher. Thus, there is greater care for the graduate to assume their professional practice with well-evaluated skills. "Today, professional training in Brazil is very focused on evaluating knowledge and it does it very well. However, to be a health professional, it is not enough just to have knowledge. It is necessary to have skill and respect the values ​​of the profession. To have attitudes consistent with their professional role in society". He explains that these skills are generally not formally assessed.

The LAG Project

The purpose of the DD project is to prepare teachers who work in different courses in the health area, aiming to create conditions to start carrying out actions related to the student's programmatic evaluation.

DD is running in four phases. The first was the objective assessment of the conditions under which student assessment takes place. In the next stage, the current phase, intensive activities centered on the development of teachers are being developed within the participating institutions. The third phase will involve a larger group of faculty, including each participating unit. At the beginning of the last stage, courses will be encouraged to introduce new assessment and DD practices. Finally, a new objective assessment will be made of what has changed in each course, in terms of the student and DD assessment scenario.

In all, 16 courses and seven institutions are involved in the consortium, among them Unicamp, UFScar, UFMG, Passo Fundo University, USP and Escola Bahiana de Medicina e Saúde Pública.

PROID

The coordinator of PROIDD and professor of the Dentistry course, Sandra Brasil says that since 2016 the dean, Dr. Maria Luisa Soliani, requested a project to improve the evaluation process of the Bahiana, at graduation. An initial project was prepared to create a space for collective construction with the teachers. Then, teacher development workshops were held with the collaboration of consultant Márcia Sakai, from Afya Educacional and with professor Rui Souza, from the Federal University of Roraima. Prof. Marcia Sakai, present at the LAG workshop, draws attention to the importance of institutional change that has been promoted in the institution's daily life by teachers, because, if there is no change in the institutional culture, the new assessment methodologies they will not be assimilated. But the main point is that evaluation here is an institutional policy that has been facilitated by PROIDD.

Prof. Sandra informed that, in order to consolidate this work, a year ago the Institutional Evaluation Commission (CIA) was created, coordinated by Professor Dr. Maria Emília Pereira. The CIA is made up of subcommittees in each course to spread that culture across the course. There is an entire institutional investment in teacher training with the various workshops, including the current partnership between USP/Ribeirão Preto and LAG. This initiative brought a new perspective that will enable the institution to further advance in the evaluation process