Preliminary Grade Form – How To Complete (Explore and Focus – APC and APC Sub-I)
Grading is the part we all find most challenging – after all, we want to be teachers, not graders.
The e-value system that UWSOM uses is not so user friendly, and there are changes every year to try to “improve” (i.e., “make less bad”). Here’s a step-by-step that we hope will help:
- Credits: Usually this is “8” for a 4-week APC and APC Sub-I Course. Feel free to leave it blank we can fill it in. BTW – any time we say “leave it blank” and the system seems to insist that you write something, feel free to put in “XX” or some asterisks or “I have no idea” and we can still fill it in.
- Clerkship director/faculty: Feel free to put in your name here.
- Student number: That’s the UWSOM student ID. If you don’t have it leave it blank – we have them all.
- Final grade: This is the clinical grade that you feel the student deserves, based on your review of the clinical performance.
- Note that if you choose a “word grade” that doesn’t seem to align with the Likert scores and the comments, we usually contact you for a conversation to get a better understanding of why it is not in alignment.
- We ask that you not use the “No Grade Now” – that is saved for special circumstances like in-completes, etc. We would be talking before we marked that one.
- 12 domains marked as Likert scores: Each one of these has some verbiage that is supposed to make it clear what we mean by levels of performance for “Knowledge of Subject”, “Data-Gathering Skills” etc. Mark for each or “N/A” if it’s something the student really doesn’t do.
- Bioethical Component and Mini-CEX: Type in “N/A”.
- Final Examination Grade: Type in “N/A”.
- Overall Assessment: Almost everyone is “Meets or Exceeds Expectations”. If the student is “Meets or Exceeds Expectations”, leave the free-text box blank. If you click “Needs Development” or “Unacceptable”, we have to explain it in the box that comes next, and we need to chat.
- Concerns about Clinical Performance or Concerns about Professional Behavior/Conduct: Again, if marking “Yes”, it needs explanation in the text box. If “No”, leave the text box blank (typing into the boxes even the words “No concerns” flags the system that there is a problem, so better to leave blank).
- Areas of strength/areas for work-growth: here, we ask for 2-4 bullet-point-type comments. If there was a problem that didn’t really rise to the level of the “Concerns” boxes above, you can put it in here using some constructive feedback wording.
- Summary of overall performance (the “MSPE” Box): Here, we type in the overall commentary, trying to touch on all the Competencies. The Dean’s office has said this must be <300 words – not so easy! This paragraph gets dropped into the MSPE (the “dean’s letter”) when the student applies for residency, so this one is important.