WANG Ying, LV Ling-Hui, WEI Ren-Ji, ZHANG Xiang, RU Yi, YAN Bo, SHEN Lan, SUN Mao, LIANG Liang, ZHAO Jing
The success of “New Medical Sciences” in higher education requires effective tools in evaluating students’ performance in courses. Previously, we reported a teamwork (T), critique (C) and appreciation (A) (TCA) ideological and political model, a teaching model widely applied in Basic Medical courses. TCA is an abbreviation derived from Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle in Biochemistry as an analogy for nurturing the abilities of thinking and teamwork (T), critique (C) and appreciation (A), which hopefully could provide students with moral norms for cognition, science and life. This paper further explores the tools to assess the educational outcomes of the TCA model, by which teachers can collect feedback and reflect on teaching quality and effectiveness. Addressing the challenges of individual differences in large classes, fragmented learning feedback, and the difficulty of measuring meta-cognition in educational evaluation, this study employs strategies of value-added assessment, matrix assessment and norm-transferable assessment to evaluate the TCA abilities from the aspects of thinking quality, thinking creativity, cooperation ability, iterative thinking, dialectical thinking and job responsibility. By modifying/using 18 evaluation tools in Education and Psychology, we have established a rubric system composed of 30 primary indicators (with 11 newly designed, 10 partly modified and 9 directly adopted), along with 49 secondary indicators and 98 tertiary indicators to enhance the feasibility of the evaluation process. This rubric system was applied to Biochemistry teaching among the five-year-program undergraduates at Air Force Medical University. Specifically, thinking and teamwork are evaluated by creative works from “the magic biochemical-circle”, while critiques are assessed in large classes under the guidance of basic and clinical teachers, coupled with appreciation measured by job responsibility in a task-driven virtual reality (VR) project. The results indicate that Biochemistry teaching not only accumulates knowledge in students, but also achieves the goals in nurturing values and cognition. The inclusion of creative performance evaluation, cooperative learning and clinical case studies, can enhance students’ interpersonal skills, cooperation, quality of thinking, creative thinking, iterative thinking and dialectical thinking to varying degrees. TCA-based Biochemistry teaching has a long-lasting impact on character education, and is capable of inducing positive long-term changes in students’ cognition and lifestyle. Taken together, with the help of this rubric system, teachers can promptly acknowledge the effectiveness of their teaching, thereby facilitating their teaching strategies.
