Evaluation and Assessment: Help AOSpine to Continue Delivering the Best Quality Education

 

 

 

 

The AO Foundation places a strong focus on maintaining and improving the quality of education around the globe. With this, the AO Education Platform and the AO Clinical Divisions have recognized the need for centralized, consistent, and regular reporting on all educational activities. As a result, a foundation-wide concept has been established. Tools, systems, and workflows are now in place to collect and analyze data, and create consistent reports.

 

Are you an event chairperson or educational advisor? If so, the following information is important for you:

 

In your role as a chairperson or educational advisor, you will receive a Pre-Event Participant Data Report before each educational event. This report will include the practice profile and self-assessed expertise for each course participant, and a gap/motivation analysis. This information serves to help you to adapt your content to best meet participant needs. You are also encouraged to share this information and your analysis with your faculty members to help with their planning.

 

We recommend that you prepare a brief email to communicate the importance of the pre-assessment to the course participants before the process begins (which is 40 days before an event). Your course organizer would be glad to send this letter to the participants on your behalf.

 

Content and Faculty Report

At each event, the participants will assess your faculty members on:

1. How useful the presentation topic was to their daily practice (content evaluation)
2. How effective the faculty members were in their role (performance evaluation)

 

Your faculty members will receive their individual scores from the course organizer, to ensure anonymity.

 

Post-Event Evaluation Report

You will receive this report after each event, which shows the overall educational impact and ratings for a series of aspects including how well the objectives were met, the perception of bias, etc. This report also includes a post-event gap analysis, and confidential faculty and content ratings. This information serves to help you to evaluate the event, and make any modifications for future events.

 

Commitment to Change Outcome Report

The Commitment to Change tool serves to gather intended changes in practice. The instrument includes a 3-month follow-up question on implementation status from the event participants. You will receive the final report four months after the event concludes.

 

Why is this input and feedback important?

Participant input and feedback enables you to make any necessary adjustments to your program and content to best meet participant needs. For instance, if the results reveal that you have a more advanced level of participants than expected at a given Master’s Level course, you may wish to consider raising the complexity level of your case discussions.

 

An educational event evaluation enables the clinicial divisions to share information with their councils and regional boards, to better understand the unique needs in the regions, enhance future learning activities, and help to improve patient outcomes.

 

Are you an event faculty member? If so, the following information is relevant to you:

 

Pre-Event Participant Data Report

As a faculty member, you will receive a Pre-Event Participant Data Report from your chairperson before each educational event. This report includes the practice profile and self-assessed expertise level of each of the participants, so that you can adapt your content to best meet their needs.

 

Individual Faculty Report

At each event, the participants will assess you on:

1. How useful the presentation topic was to their daily practice (content evaluation)
2. How effective the faculty members were in their role (performance evaluation)

 

You will receive the results of this assessment after each event individually, including:

1. Individual performance compared with average performance of the event (content and faculty)
2. Impact of the overall event to participants
3. The degree to which event objectives have been met
4. Areas to possibly further develop, through education offered within the AOSpine network

 

Why is this input and feedback important?

An educational event evaluation enables AOSpine to share information with the AOSpine councils and regional boards, to better understand the unique needs in the regions, enhance future learning activities, and help to improve patient outcomes.