A method for assessing student ability to apply anatomical knowledge within a traditional anatomy laboratory examination

Fidelity between teaching activities and assessment methods is an important goal of knowledge and performance evaluations in medical education. Ideally, assessment methods provide evidence of learning that reflects the types of knowledge described in the learning objectives of the course. The most reliable assessments involve the same or similar tasks as those used during the instructional components of the course. Our preclinical human anatomy course includes, in addition to traditional lecture and cadaver-based laboratory learning activities, a series of applied human anatomy learning activities intended to emphasize human anatomy as it is encountered in living human individuals. The learning activities involve psychomotor behaviors including inspection, palpation, and auscultation, techniques used in the physical examination, as well as other activities designed to emphasize anatomical structures and tissues as they may be found in patient populations. We describe here our method for measuring student success in learning human anatomy in this manner, highlighting the direct linkage between the learning activities and the assessment tasks. We describe our performance scoring method and how we include this data in the calculation of an anatomy examination grade. As an indicator of our success with this approach, we include performance scores for the applied anatomy questions included on the laboratory component of our unit examinations for two successive academic years. We conclude with summary comments from students regarding the applied anatomy learning activities and assessment approach and offer suggestions for addressing specific challenges associated with the use of these types of assessment methods.