Alternatives in Assessment: Student-generated Videos and Online Written Case presentations in Medical English

Creation is the top level of intellectual skills in Bloom's taxonomy. It requires learners to move from gaining knowledge, through analysing and eventually synthesizing, to making judgments. Although rarely do we attain the formation of this top skill in formal English learning environments, it is attainable with advanced medical students and especially desirable as they have to demonstrate perspicacity in the medical practice as early as their first clinical year, representing a key life-time competence for the future physicians. This presentation will document and analyse two assessment alternatives targeting precisely professionally relevant oral and written Medical English (ME) creative language use within an asynchronously-connected Facebook group as part of the ME blended learning format with students of UMFST GE Palade of Targu Mures during the academic year 1917-1918. The research employed a descriptive method. I explore the use of student-generated videos (individual presentations recorded on mobile devices) and written case presentations (Padlet.com) as alternatives in formative assessment, underlining their specific added values for Medical English: deep learning as well as professionally-relevant, more authentic, autonomous, skill-integrative productions that capitalise on the students' ability to use and produce the language rather than demonstrate knowledge of the language (inherent in exercise solving and tests). Student satisfaction questionnaires demonstrate that student-generated videos and online written case presentations are relevant, complex, and memorable means of assessment of Medical English progress that can complement online tests/quizzes, especially for the current context of full online learning and assessment.