Assessment of an Evaluative Rubric for Orthoptic Students' Performance in a Clinical Training

Abstract

  Orthoptic students' performance in a clinical training is currently evaluated in stages during the training program. However, the results are likely to be affected by the subjectivity of the program's supervisors who are generally from various institutes. Standardization of the evaluation criteria has been difficult. Furthermore, the scores given by the supervisor are sometimes lower than the students' self-evaluation scores and the results do not provide the students informative feedback about the weakness they need to work on. With an attempt to overcome the drawbacks of the current evaluation system, in the present study, orthoptic students' performance in the clinical training was evaluated using a rubric and the usefulness of the rubric was investigated.
   Subjects included 37 orthoptic students from University A (4 men and 33 women; mean age, 20.3 ± 0.5 years). The evaluation criteria of the rubric were standardized in order to minimize the influence of different evaluators. Six items that covered all the basic subjects for the clinical training were included in the rubric. Each item was scored as follows: good (3 points), satisfactory (2 points), unsatisfactory (1 point), and poor (0 point). After the students completed their training, they were asked to answer the questions on the rubric (self-evaluation) and their supervisors were also asked to answer the same questions (objective evaluation).
   The rubric was given to the students before the start of their training and therefore could be used as a guide or directions for how they would perform during the training. Since the evaluation criteria in the rubric are specifically documented, the rubric can serve as a tool to standardize and align the evaluations of both between the supervisors and students.