What happens when medical students set their own exam papers?
Baerheim A; Meland E Seksjon for allmennmedisin Institutt for samfunnsmedisinske fag Universitetet i Bergen Ulriksdal 8C 5009 Bergen. anders.barheim@isf.uib.no BACKGROUND: In the section for general practice at the University of Bergen, Norway, we want to emphasise learning more than control in our work with students. As a step in this direction we invited students to come up with proposals for exam papers, papers that usually include six to nine multiple steps for clinical reasoning. We guaranteed that one out of three proposals would be included as a paper in the written examination, possibly slightly modified. This article is an evaluation of the consequences of letting medical students set some of their own exam papers. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The process was evaluated using 1) grades given, 2) students’ assessment of whether this mode of setting papers influenced their exam preparations, and 3) students’ free-text comments on the process. RESULTS: 57 out of 64 students (89%) took pa
