Implement formative and summative assessment with virtual patients

One of the worst things that our students have been going through in this day and age is that are cramming knowledge with zero implementation or practical knowledge.

Schools, colleges, and universities are filled with teachers and peers where the emphasis is heavily laid upon on just cramming the textbooks without actually having any understanding of what’s being learned or taught.

|It happens more so in medical education where even in this day and age, students largely focus on textbooks or taking notes during the lectures only.
It’s time for shifting paradigms and allowing the students to be critical thinkers so that they can ‘learn by taking actions’ and not just by ‘cramming’.

There are four steps in order to accelerate the process of ‘learning by taking actions. The first one is ‘DO’. The second one is ‘Feedback’. The third one is ‘To conclude’. And the fourth one is ‘To decide’.

Before we learn about the virtual patients simulation and their formative and summative formation assessments, let us learn about the types of learning and the difference between the formative and summative assessments first.

Types of Learning

We all know that there are two types of learning basically.

Passive Learning

The first type is passive where a student learns without actually being involved actively.
Such type of learning doesn’t happen to be the most beneficial one.

Active Learning

The second type of learning is an active one. In such a type, the student actually engages in the class actively while taking the lecture. It is beneficial than the passive learning.

Constructive Learning

The third type of learning is called constructive learning.
Constructive learning allows the individual to learn the concepts by using their existing knowledge.
This type of learning is far beneficial than the active learning.

Interactive Learning

Interactive learning is by far the best among all. Because it allows both the student and the instructor to interact with one another. Moreover, it also allows to get one-on-one feedback in real time.
Importance of Getting Feedback

Since a lot of paradigms are shifting and a lot of studies are being done on what kind of learning settings are most suitable for both the students and instructors,
it’s been noticed that getting feedback from the students can actually accelerate and improve the process of the learning.

If the important component of feedback is missing from the learning settings, then this can be a great hindrance for the entire system in bringing improvement to the education settings.
Hence, feedback is of great importance.
Formative Assessment Vs. Summative Assessment

Feedbacks are of two types.
One is the old-fashioned feedback where a student gets to know of his performance by his teacher which is normally known as summative assessment.

The other type of feedback ensures that the student is also fully involved in giving his feedback and such type of feedback is known as formative assessment.
The former type of assessment neither benefits the student nor the teacher. In fact, it can rather leave negative effects because there is no active involvement of the students.

On the other hand, formative assessment can ensure that both the student and the teacher have full space of
sharing their views and all.

Virtual Patients Simulation in the Field of Medical

Since we all are now familiar with the term ‘Virtual Patients Simulation’,
hence we now know that virtual patients are an alternative for real patients because of the limitations of medical education system.
Experts from all around the world are ensuring to seek the benefit of technology to its maximum by introducing new ways of learning medicine by bringing enhancement in the system. It’s so that they can reduce the limitations which a student from medical background has to go through due to lack of practical opportunities.

Virtual Patients’ Formative Assessments

As we have already learned the meaning of formative assessment, so if we implement the same sort of assessment in the virtual patients’ simulation learning scenario then
it may bring out really good results.
Such an assessment may allow the instructors to know the strengths and weaknesses of their respective disciples. This can also allow them to address the most required areas where their students need the help with.
In the case of virtual patients a student
who is weak in a certain area or diagnosis and need help the most in then he can be given that case repeatedly so that
he can master it better while learning it.
This style of learning will ensure that the gap in their understanding is no longer
there or at least minimized to some extent.
This will also allow the students to learn a precise way of evaluating their own strengths and weaknesses in their skills of diagnosis.

This sort of assessment will accelerate the learning process of the individuals as well as will allow the students to
have a deeper level of understanding concerning their area of interest.

Virtual Patients’ Summative Assessments

In such sort of settings usually the assessment is done by the end of the course.
It doesn’t allow the educators of health profession to actually assess the students properly because they normally keep delivering the same sort of courses every year without actually making any efforts of improving it.
However, the assessment gained at the end of the course is usually beneficial for the learners despite its low effectiveness.

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Summative assessment has its own benefits
which can’t be neglected but
it has become an old school fashion because it doesn’t reap any real benefits.
However, it is essential to know that summative assessment only does
the bare minimum and won’t be able bring out the actual potential.

Conclusion

All in all, whether you go with the summative assessment for virtual patients or formative assessment, both sort of assessments is pretty good.
But just to know that formative assessment has far more benefits and has an upper hand over the summative one.
People who are linked with the medical health professional would testify to this fact that
when it comes to education related settings then formative assessment helps the individuals to gain some real life benefits because
They can then implement the same lessons on real life patients too which they would have learned during their early education years.