ORGANIZATION OF STUDENTS’ INDEPENDENT ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING IN THE COURSE OF PREPARATION TO SUBTEST OF LICENSING EXAMINATION «KROK 1. DENTISTRY»

Over two decades Ukrainian system of medical professional training has been providing a single pathway for primary licensure of all graduates of medical schools by licensing examinations «Krok 1», «Krok 2» and «Krok 3». Since their inceptions, the examinations provide the valid and reliable independent assessment of medical examinations in order to demonstrate they have knowledge and clinical skills for the unsupervised general practice of medicine, and thus, to grant the primary license to practice medicine. The aim of this study is to analyze ways of the organization of student’s self-learning at the Department of Foreign Languages with Latin and Medical Terminology, Ukrainian Medical Stomatological Academy, which will promote the confidence in own English language command and ensure demonstrating high performance of English subtest «Krok 1». Independent learning using additional texts should help students, concerning with previously studied elements of terminology, lexis and grammar, to figure out faster phrases and constructions in texts based on the contex and extra linguistic clues. The analysis of the factors influencing the students’ performance when doing the Krok tests, we have found the guided language exposure and scheduled amount of time for independent work according to the curriculum can help to overcome typical linguistic obstacles. Moreover, the English language instructors elaborated the questionnaire and surveyed the students to identify self-learning routine peculiarities, resources commonly used for self-training to licensing examination, which are the most effective from their point of view. The study included 155 third year dental students (2019-2020 academic year). The students actively use mobile applications from the playmarket, namely K-test, which they can use for independent practice at individual pace. Computer technologies can significantly improve the efficiency of foreign language teaching and learning and help us in organizing independent work of the students. According to result obtained, testkrokorg.ua internet resource ranks the second position. 19.35% of students chose this site as it gives an opportunity to check the knowledge, to get graded and to get the right answers. 17.41% of the respondents used testcentr.org.ua by reviewing and uploading Krok test booklets. 11.61% of the students used social network groups, which post materials, news and results to licensing examinations. 9.67% of students are found to prefer booklets; methodical instructions for students’ training that are on the site of our department. 3.2% of the responders suggest that lifehacks in YouTube contains the experience of bloggers and due to them the youth can learn new things. The obtained results have shown that the computer appliances are of great recourses for independent learning when used purposefully and guided by the instructors.

Licensing examinations in Southeast Asia: Lesson learnt from exploring changes in education policy

Southeast Asian region has been experiencing significant challenges to their health care systems, driving some countries establishing policies to ensure the quality of the medical workforce through the introduction of national licensing examinations. This paper examines the experiences of Southeast Asian countries in implementing licensing examinations, highlighting the changes and development of the education policy and its impact on medical education. The lesson learnt from the high-stakes assessment policy offers a new perspective on how medical licensing examinations could represent a potential regional approach for a better health care.

Investigation of answer changes on the USMLE® Step 2 Clinical Knowledge examination

Background Examinees often believe that changing answers will lower their scores; however, empirical studies suggest that allowing examinees to change responses may improve their performance in classroom assessments. To date, no studies have been able to examine answer changes during large scale professional credentialing or licensing examinations. Methods In this study, we expand the research on answer changes by analyzing responses from 27,830 examinees who completed the Step 2 Clinical Knowledge (CK) examination between August of 2015 and August of 2016. Results The results showed that although 68% of examinees changed at least one item, the overall average number of changes was small. Among the examinees who changed answers, approximately 45% increased their scores and approximately 28% decreased their scores. On average, examinees spent shortest time on the item changes from wrong to right and they were more likely to change their scores from wrong to right than right to wrong. Conclusions Consistent with previous studies, these findings support the beneficial effects of answer changes in high-stakes medical examinations and suggest that examinees who are overly cautious about changing answers may put themselves at a disadvantage.