First-year medical students’ perceptions of objective structured clinical examinations’ contributions to learning

There is increasing interest in medical education in the use of assessments to enhance student learning. However, there remains limited understanding of the range of factors that influence student learning before, during, and after assessments. Current research has mainly focused on learning after an assessment and focused on providing feedback as a form of support. A Self-Regulated Learning perspective prompts consideration of a wider range of potential factors and suggests that students’ personal objectives drive learning in educational tasks with students navigating the learning environment in ways they think will most help them work towards their objectives. Using principles of Constructivist Grounded Theory, first-year medical students attending a Canadian university were interviewed about their experience learning through Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) that were presented by their training program as needing to be completed for formative (21 students) and summative (15 students) purposes. Each OSCE consisted of a series of brief simulated patient encounters. This research demonstrated that students’ learning through OSCEs was a complex process influenced by interactions between factors related to the student, assessment design and the broader environment.Education, Faculty ofGraduat