The purpose of this quantitative, non-experimental, correlational study was to determine if there was a correlation between first-time pass rates on the USMLE Step 1 and the use of active learning strategies in medical school classrooms. For the utility of this study, active learning strategies were defined as any activity in which medical…

Previous research on rapid responding tends to implicitly consider examinees as either engaging in solution behavior or purely guessing. However, particularly in a high-stakes testing context, examinees perceiving that they are running out of time may consider the remaining items for less time than necessary to provide a fully informed response,…

Test scoring models vary in their generality, some even adjust for examinees answering multiple-choice items correctly by accident (guessing), but no models, that we are aware of, automatically adjust an examinee's score when there is internal evidence of cheating. In this study, we use a combination of jackknife technology with an adaptive robust…

Retrieval practice improves long-term retention. Use of interactive retrieval practice in large group, in-person and online live classes, in combination with outside resources, is unreported for medical physiology classes. The primary study purpose was to compare student cohorts' performance with or without retrieval practice in renal physiology…

This article presents a new approach to the analysis of how students answer tests and how they allocate resources in terms of time on task and revisiting previously answered questions. Previous research has shown that in high-stakes assessments, most test takers do not end the testing session early, but rather spend all of the time they were…

Dynamic Measurement Modeling (DMM) is a psychometric paradigm that uses longitudinal data to estimate students' capacity to learn over the course of an educational program (i.e., growth scores). Here, we provide justification for this approach in health professions education and demonstrate its proof of concept with three time-points of USMLE Step…

The relative impact of admissions factors and curricular measures on the first medical licensing exam (United States Medical Licensing Exam [USMLE] Step 1) scores is examined. The inclusion of first-year and second-year curricular measures nearly doubled the variance explained in Step 1 scores from the amount explained by the combination of…

This descriptive article describes the use of clinical case-based portfolios in histopathology teaching laboratories in conjunction with virtual microscopy not only to integrate histology and pathology disciplines for first and second year medical students but also to stimulate student engagement, promote self-directed and group-based learning and…

The Angoff standard setting method relies on content experts to review exam items and make judgments about the performance of the minimally proficient examinee. Unfortunately, at times content experts may have gaps in their understanding of specific exam content. These gaps are particularly likely to occur when the content domain is broad and/or…

Much of the content delivered during medical students' preclinical years is assessed nationally by such testing as the United States Medical Licensing Examination® (USMLE®) Step 1 and Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Licensing Examination® (COMPLEX-USA®) Step 1. Improvement of student study/learning strategies skills is associated with academic…

Recent changes to the patient note (PN) format of the United States Medical Licensing Examination have challenged medical schools to improve the instruction and assessment of students taking the Step-2 clinical skills examination. The purpose of this study was to gather validity evidence regarding response process and internal structure, focusing…

The purpose of the present study was to extend past work with the Angoff method for setting standards by examining judgments at the judge level rather than the panel level. The focus was on investigating the relationship between observed Angoff standard setting judgments and empirical conditional probabilities. This relationship has been used as a…

Changes in medical school curricula often require educators to develop teaching strategies that decrease contact hours while maintaining effective pedagogical methods. When faced with this challenge, faculty at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine converted the majority of in-person histology laboratory sessions to self-study modules…

Correlates of achievement in the basic science years in medical school and on the Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination® (USMLE®), (Step 1) in relation to preadmission variables have been the subject of considerable study. Preadmissions variables such as the undergraduate grade point average (uGPA) and Medical College Admission…

Success in residency matching is largely contingent upon standardized exam scores. Identifying predictors of standardized exam performance could promote primary intervention and lead to design insights for preclinical courses. We hypothesized that clinically relevant courses with an emphasis on higher-order cognitive understanding are most…