2004 Annual Meeting

2004 Winter Meeting
The Cloister
Sea Island, GA
January 30 - February 1, 2004
Members and current department chairs should receive full information and registration materials around December 1.
Two Teaching Workshops will follow the meeting on February 1- 2.

“HOW PHARMACOLOGY CAN SURVIVE IN ANY TYPE OF  MEDICAL CURRICULUM”
(Monday, February 2, 2004: 8:30 A.M. – 12:15 P.M.)

Schedule:

 8:30- 9:00 AM – Introduction- Carl Faingold, Southern Illinois Univ.

     Rationale for change
 A. AAMC Pressure
 B. Medical Student Concerns
     1. Pharmacology as a Sanskrit dictionary
     2.  Difficulty in integrating discipline-specific info for use in clinical years                       C. C.   C.  Caveats

 9:00 - 9:15 AM    Discussion

 9:15- 9:45 AM      The Response at University of California at Irvine- Sue Duckles                        
                           or:  “Tradition: Is there anything yet to be learned?"

 9:45 -10:15 AM    Discussion and Coffee Break

10:15 -10:45 AM    The Response at Southern Illinois Univ. Carl Faingold
                            or:  “How Pharmacology Can Survive in Any Curriculum”

10:45- 11:15 AM    Discussion and Coffee Break

11:15- 11:45 AM    The Response at Medical College of Ohio at Toledo-Howard Rosenberg                                                    or:  “The Good the Bad and the Ugly”

11:45 -12:15 PM            Questions to the Panel

12:15                        Adjournment

 “Writing Test Questions for Medical Pharmacology: Theory and Practical Exercises”
(Sunday, February 1, 2004:  2:00 – 5:30 P.M.)

 Overview: 

The overall objective of this half-day workshop will be to enable pharmacology teachers to write better test questions for examinations in medical school pharmacology.  We will concentrate on question formats endorsed by the NBME.

A practical approach will be taken so that the skills acquired during this workshop can be of immediate benefit.  This will include a review of “bad” questions and a discussion of the characteristics of “good” questions.

We will then break up into small groups to edit previously written questions and to write new questions.  We will ask each participant to submit 3-5 questions prior to the workshop.  If pre-submission is not possible, we will ask each participant to bring 3-5 questions to the workshop.  We will then select questions for each group to fix.  We will also ask each group to write some new questions.

We will reconvene all of the participants and ask each group to present one question in its original form and to show how it was improved.  We will collect all of the questions from all of the groups, assemble and distribute them prior to the end of the conference so that each participant will leave with a collection of new questions for use at his/her home institution.

To conclude the session, we will discuss the application of these practices in the course setting.  This will include how to convince colleagues to write good questions and how to evaluate the suitability of test questions.

Schedule:

Purpose of this workshop: Mark Simmons and John Szarek – 25 min
Why do we test?
What should we test?

Testing guidelines Part 1: Jack Strandhoy – 40 min

Objectives of testing
Item formats
Technical Flaws
Item templates
Extended Matching

Small Groups Workshop Part 1– 30 min

Learn to fix flawed questions.

Testing guidelines Part 2: Jack Strandhoy – 20 min

MCQs for PBL
Integrative questions.

Small Groups Workshop Part 2– 30 min

Generate new questions.

Presentations of small group questions – 40 min
 

Closing – 20 min
How to implement and evaluate good question writing practices.

Presenters:

Mark A. Simmons, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine

Jack W. Strandhoy, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine

John L. Szarek, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Pharmacology, Ross University School of Medicine