Aquifer Calibrate assessments are assessments FOR learning, leveraging the concepts of test-enhanced learning and spaced repetition. Calibrate drives self-directed learning in clinical students, helping them build higher order thinking and problem solving skills, and provides a common tool and objective data to align students and faculty and leverage mid-clerkship feedback.
With Calibrate students can make the most of their clinical experiences – identifying areas of strength and weakness, exposing blind spots where confidence and accuracy are misaligned. For faculty and administrators, Calibrate provides a structured way to support accreditation standards for feedback and self-directed learning, and valuable insights and data to drive effective coaching conversations, pinpoint learners in need of remediation, and identify curricular gaps.
Calibrate assessments are:
- Single-answer multiple-choice exams with a certainty rating for each question
- 25-45 questions long and take approximately 1 hour
- Designed to be given twice during a clerkship or course to leverage spaced learning
- Comprehensive to all cases in each Aquifer course
- Mapped to learning objectives and teaching points in Aquifer cases, which cover the national curriculum for STFM, AUR, COMSEP, and CDIM.
- Developed, written, and peer-reviewed by teams of trained medical educators.
- Easy to administer (no proctoring required)
NO EASY ANSWERS
Real patients don’t come with tidy answers. Calibrate is assessment for learning. There are no scores, and no question stems and answers in reports. Rather than driving toward memorization, Calibrate empowers students to analyze trends, link back to teaching points, build their own learning plans and grow as master adaptive learners.
Formative
Informs student learning
Summative
Provides a score
HOW CALIBRATE HELPS
Calibrates Knowledge & Certainty
Identifies True Knowledge Gaps
- Detailed reports go beyond right or wrong answers
- Identifies areas of strength to expand upon during clinical experiences
- Provides new dimensions for diagnosing and addressing problem areas
- Underconfidence
- Overconfidence
- Knowledge gaps
Drives Efficient Self-Directed Learning
- Informs efficient study plans
- Links to relevant, trusted content to address gaps & find answers
- Supports accreditation standards on self-directed learning
Informs Meaningful Feedback and Coaching Conversations
- Aligns students & faculty around a common tool
- Provides objective data to drive conversations
- Supports accreditation standards for formative assessment and feedback
- Develops faculty coaching skills
Aligns to National Clerkship Curriculum
- Trust that your students are learning your clerkship’s core curricular objectives
- Highlights areas of curricular strength and areas for improvements
- Supports accreditation standards for curricular content and management
Easy to Adopt
Trusted Tools, Quality Content
- Embedded within the overall Aquifer learning system
- Easy to administer
- No proctoring required
- Delivers highest quality assessments developed by your trusted peers and expert educators
LOOK INSIDE
Calibrate reports deliver instant, actionable results to students, and provide a unique look at cohort and student summary performance for faculty.
- Calibrate Questions
- Calibrate Administration
- For Students: Performance Summary
- For Students: Detailed Performance
- For Students: To-Do List and Learning Plan
- For Coaches: Student Performance Summary
- For Coaches: For Coaches: Anyone Can Coach! Handbook and Quick Coaching tips
- For Faculty: Cohort Summary
- For Faculty: Student Performance Summary
Calibrate Questions
The 25-40 board-style vignette questions in each Calibrate assessment are comprehensive to all cases in the Aquifer course, and mapped to the learning objectives and teaching points.
- Each question includes a certainty rating
- Two separate exams available per course, each with different questions
- All questions developed by expert educators
Calibrate Administration
Calibrate is designed to be given twice–early and late in the course providing data about students’ learning at critical formative touchpoints.
- Set a window for students to take the exam on their own
- No proctoring is required
- Students complete the assessment on their own time, typically in under an hour,
- Students receive immediate results.
Student Performance Reports
THOROUGH ANALYSIS
Student reports provide detailed information to illuminate knowledge gaps and drive efficient study planning. Reports include:
- Summary of performance in comparison to national peers
- Summary of performance & comparison between early & late assessments
- Coaching suggestions & next steps
- Option to share reports directly with coaches, preceptors, faculty, and peers
Detailed Performance & Links to Learning Resources
GET DEEP INSIGHTS
For each teaching point and learning objective, students can see their accuracy and certainty, along with the relevant system, whether they have already completed the related Aquifer case, and link directly to the teaching point or full Aquifer case. Reports include:
- Detailed performance by learning objective/teaching point, including accuracy and certainty ratings
- Direct links to the relevant teaching point & Aquifer case for self-directed learning
- Sort the report to easily view areas that were not accurate or lacked certainty
Note: Faculty do not have access to detailed student performance to preserve a safe space for learners.
Student To-Do List and Learning Plan
MAXIMIZE YOUR STUDY TIME
Students have the ability to directly add Aquifer cases from their Calibrate reports to a to-do list, and build a learning plan to share with a coach or preceptor. Features include:
- Easy ability to add cases with notes to a to-do list
- Prompts to reflect on results to find key insights, determine next steps, and create an accountability plan
- Comments and questions for coaches
- Button to directly share with learning coach
For Coaches: Student Performance Summary
OBJECTIVE DATA TO FUEL COACHING CONVERSATIONS
Students have the option to share a summary of their performance directly with a preceptor, faculty member, resident, tutor, or peer. Along with the summary data about the student's assessment, coaches also receive coaching tips and access to quick, efficient tools to help them support the student in a meaningful way.
For Coaches: Anyone Can Coach! Handbook and Quick Coaching tips
RESOURCES AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
Our comprehensive guide draws from the latest research in educational psychology, cognitive science, and coaching techniques to simplify the coaching process into three-step Anyone Can Coach! process. With the included Coaching Script and other resources, educators can have tailored and transformative coaching sessions with each learner. Anyone Can Coach! Is the model we have developed that distills the competencies of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and competencies from medical education literature into a three-part process.
For Faculty: Cohort Performance Reports
HIGHLIGHTING CURRICULAR GAPS
Compare cohort performance across early and late administrations of the assessment, and find curricular gaps easily by seeing cohort performance at a granular level, associated with each teaching point and learning objective covered. Reports are sortable by clinical focus, system, Clinical Clearning Calibration, and more, allowing you to see exactly where your students are succeeding, and where they need additional help. You can even compare results across cohorts to get a big picture view of your curriculum.
For Faculty: Student Performance Summary Reports
IDENTIFY AT-RISK STUDENTS
High-level student performance summaries support early identification of students in need of coaching or remediation. Results are color-coded and easy to sort, with access to notes to drive coaching conversations.
Access Calibrate
Calibrate is available at no additional cost with all institutional subscriptions to Aquifer Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Radiology. If you are an Aquifer subscriber and would like to use Calibrate with your learners, contact the Aquifer Program Service Administrator at your program to request to be designated as a Lead Course Administrator so you can assign assessments.
LEARN MORE
Videos: Calibrate Insights from Dr. Leslie Fall
Leslie Fall, MD, CEO of Aquifer, explains why we developed Calibrate, why early assessment is so critical to health professions education students, and how Calibrate empowers learners to become better clinicians.
Podcast: Coaching Conversations – Tips & Tools to Empower Learners
Guest: Sherilyn Smith, MD, Professor Emerita of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine and International Coaching Federation Certified Coach
Dr. Sherilyn Smith provides tips on how to prepare for and conduct coaching conversations that develop students into lifelong learners who are able to create plans, take time to reflect, identify personal learning gaps, and are motivated to fill those gaps. Dr. Smith also discusses how Aquifer’s new Calibrate formative assessment system benefits faculty and students by providing information that can inform and enhance their coaching conversations. Full show notes can be found here.
Podcast: Implementing Coaching in Clinical Settings
Guest: Sherilyn Smith, MD, Professor Emerita of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine and International Coaching Federation Certified Coach
Sherilyn Smith returns to our podcast to discuss how to implement coaching in clinical settings. We revisit our discussion about the value of coaching to develop master adaptive learners and then spend time focusing on the specifics of preparing for and conducting coaching conversations with learners, with advice on how to use Aquifer Calibrate, our new formative assessment system.
Full show notes and additional resources, including Aquifer’s coaching and feedback template, can be found here.
