Developing a checklist for dental students' clinical skills assessment in practical pediatric course compared with global rating method

Selecting the appropriate education evaluation method and the effects of this choice according to different fields of medical sciences, is one of the current priorities of medical education. Therefore, the aim of this study was to design a checklist for evaluating the practical skills of dental students and to get compared with the global ranking method.

A checklist was developed for the assessment of clinical skills of the practical pediatric course according to an action research method. 32 students were evaluated by the checklist method and 32 students were evaluated by the conventional global rating method (sampling was based on available sample).  Faculty staff and students’ satisfaction regarding the two methods were reported by a 6-scaled measure and statistically analyzed by Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test. The students' scores by the two methods were subjected to paired t test for comparison.

The students were more satisfied with the checklist method (P=0.003). The faculty staff considered a greater ability of the checklist method to differentiate between the students (P=0.03). However, in terms of ease of use and suitability, most faculty staff preferred the traditional method (P=0.02). In other cases, there were no significant differences in the views of students and faculty staff towards the two methods.

In the present study, both Checklist and global rating methods were valuable for evaluation, although due to the greater satisfaction of students and faculty staff with the developed checklist method, the possibility of identifying the weak points leading to decreased scores and better assessment of capabilities, this checklist can be used for evaluation instead.