Integrated Ottawa Event pre-conference activities

Why attend a pre-conference workshop or course?

Delivered by internationally recognised experts, our pre-conference workshops and courses offer hands-on learning experiences that will help you translate emerging evidence, innovation and best practice into your own educational context.

Focused Learning – Explore key topics in health professions education in an in-depth and interactive setting.
Global Expertise – Learn from leading educators and scholars from across AMEE’s international community.
Practical Outcomes – Leave with tools, frameworks and strategies you can apply immediately in your own educational environment.
Meaningful Connections – Engage with colleagues from around the world in smaller, highly interactive groups.

Designed for participants at all stages of their careers—from those new to health professions education to experienced educators seeking fresh perspectives. Topics span the latest developments in teaching, assessment, leadership, scholarship, digital and AI-enabled education, and educational research.

The AMEE 2026 conference featuring the Integrated Ottawa Event creates additional opportunities to engage with cutting-edge thinking on authentic assessment and its role in improving learning and healthcare outcomes.

Join us in Vienna and start your conference experience with a deep dive into the ideas shaping the future of health professions education.

Our pre-conference activities are optional and must be pre-booked at an additional cost.

Delegates registered for in person attendance can book one of the morning and one of the afternoon sessions on both Saturday and Sunday before the conference begins.

Please note that lunch is not included with any of the pre-conference sessions.

Integrated Ottawa Event pre-conference course

Assessment in Health Professions Education: state of the art

Date: 23 August 2026
Time: 13:30 PM – 16:30 PM
Venue: Austria Center, Vienna
Fee: €135 + VAT

Full course details

Presenters: Katharine Boursicot¹ Rikki Goddard-Fuller², Sandra Kemp³ Mary Lawson⁴ Jen Williams⁵

¹Health Professional Assessment Consultancy (HPAC), Singapore, Singapore ²Christie Institute for Cancer Education, Manchester, UK, ³Innovation and Scholarship, Medical Education, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia ⁴Consultant in Medical Education, Melbourne, Australia ⁵Queensland University of Technology, Queensland, Australia

Background

This course is designed for healthcare professions educators who are involved with assessing undergraduate students and graduate trainees and who wish to gain a foundation in the latest developments in essential assessment principles.

Who Should Participate

This course is designed for educators who want a concise introduction to evidence-based assessment principles, and also for experienced educators who would like an update on contemporary best practice in assessment.

Structure of Workshop

Half day Pre-conference Workshop on Sunday
90 minute Intra-conference workshop on Monday
90 minute Intra-conference workshop on Tuesday

Day 1 – Pre Conference Workshop – Principles of Assessment

Evidence based principles of assessment
Validity: making defensible educational decisions
- Purposes of the assessment Þ Sources of evidence to support the decisions
- Applying the validity framework to a test

Day 2 – Conference Workshop – Overarching Contemporary Themes in Assessment – 1

Designing systems of assessment
Equity, diversity and inclusion in assessment

Day 3 – Conference Workshop – Overarching Contemporary Themes in Assessment – 2

Technology and assessment
AI and assessment

Intended Outcomes

Gain insights into current approaches and best practice in assessment
Understand test validity concepts
Become familiar with designing systems of assessment
Critically appraise the use of technology in assessment
Learn about equity, diversity and inclusion in assessment
Explore the application of AI in assessment

Integrated Ottawa Event pre-conference workshops

Ottawa PCW 1 - What’s the plan for a Struggling Student? Strategies to Assess for Remediation

Date: 22 August 2026
Time: 09:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Location: Austria Center, Vienna
Fee: €104 + VAT

Presenters: Jean Klig¹, Adina Kalet², James Kwan³, Minal Singh⁴, Calvin Chou⁵

¹Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. ²CUNY School of Medicine, New York, USA. ³TanTock Seng Hospital, Singapore, Singapore. ⁴Edge Hill University Medical School, Ormskirk, UK. ⁵University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, San Francisco, USA

Background

Evaluation and assessment data are essential to identify learners who struggle in HPE. Surveillance of this data by progression review or competency committees can lead to decisions mandating remediation when progress lags.

Grades, scores, narratives, and feedback used for committee decisions lay the groundwork for remediation as either brief support to course correct or as a more extensive response to sustained underperformance (Ellaway et al. 2018).

Yet the next steps can be challenging, as the stigma of struggle or failure is navigated and a practical plan for improvement is developed.

A gap often exists between what is learned through performance data and ultimately through interaction with the learner during creation of a remedial learning plan (Boileau, St-Onge, Audetat 2017).

Faculty and educators can build new strategies to destigmatize struggle or failure and productively diagnose the remedial learner – or assess for remediation – for future progress.

Who Should Participate

HPE faculty who remediate struggling learners; Leaders responsible for competency review, remediation decisions, or educational planning.

Structure Of Workshop

Participants will actively engage through conceptual discussion, practical tools, and peer consultation across three segments.

“Does this learner need remediation?”: We will launch with brief interactive case discussions followed by presentations on identifying the struggling learner, destigmatizing struggle or failure, and relevant assessment strategies vis-à-vis how they are effective and what they miss.
”What are the learner’s issues?” We will next brainstorm in groups on questions to clarify sources of a learner’s struggles on individual and systemic levels, discuss achieving consistency in destigmatized remediation through a next iteration of the initial cases, and close with a large group debrief.
Applying assessment for remediation: We will end with a “troika” consultation exercise whereby each participant can present a real or sample case and offer suggestions to facilitate adapting strategies to home institutions, followed by takeaways from participants, presenter closing comments, and Q&A.

Intended Outcomes

Identify common challenges to developing consistent remediation approaches to struggling learners and possible solutions.
Apply the KSA framework to remediation in future practice.
Develop a categorical approach to diagnosing the remedial learner.
Consider remediation approaches to apply at home institutions that advance the impact of remediation.

Theme or Track

Ottawa (Assessment) Theme 5 – Impact and consequences of assessment

Phase of Education

Undergraduate and Graduate

Level of Workshop

Introductory

Ottawa PCW 2 - Implementing programmatic assessment: mitigating unintended

Date: 22 August 2026
Time: 09:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Location: Austria Center, Vienna
Fee: €104 + VAT

Presenters: Glendon Tait¹, Anna Ryan², Suzanne Schut³, Mike Tweed⁴

¹University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. ²University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. ³Technical University of Delft, Delft, Netherlands. ⁴University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

Background

A programmatic system of assessment is focused on longitudinal delivery of authentic assessment events accumulated against a meaningful framework.

Designed to address some of the problems associated with traditional assessment systems, programmatic assessment aims to provide rich quantitative and qualitative feedback to support learner growth and development, while also enabling robust progress decisions.

A shift to programmatic assessment involves significant change that can lead to unintended, undesired consequences in addition to intended and expected impacts.

Early programmatic assessment implementations involved small cohorts or new programs. Many larger, established health professional programs are making the transition or are improving on existing implementations.

The workshop will address some unintended and undesired consequences resulting from change.

Drawing on our own experiences, alongside the existing evidence base, we will support participants to share and learn from varied experiences and to develop a plan to mitigate unintended and undesired consequences of change in their own context.

Who Should Participate

This workshop is aimed at those with a foundational knowledge of, and/or experience with, programmatic assessment. It will be of particular value to those designing a planned implementation, those already implementing, or those improving on existing programmatic assessment.

Structure Of Workshop

Following introductions, the presenters contrast the ideas of intended versus unintended and undesired consequences of changes to more programmatic systems of assessment.

In small groups, participants will identify and discuss actual or anticipated unintended and undesired consequences experienced.

Large group discussion will leverage findings in small groups and build on an existing list of unintended and undesired consequences, categorized into themes for discussion.

Subsequently, small groups will form around themes, tailored to participant’s contexts and interests. Substantial time will be spent exploring the mitigations, based on the experience of presenters and attendees.

A cycle of intermittent larger group reporting will be used to share and consolidate mitigation plans generated, alternating with smaller groups for discussion of different emergent themes, building on prior discussion. Key strategies will be summarized.

Intended Outcomes

During the session participants will discuss and share unintended and undesired consequences of changing to programmatic assessment.

Mitigation strategies will be identified; participants will apply these in plans for their own context.

Theme or Track

Ottawa (Assessment) Theme 1 – Assessment systems and programmes

Phase of Education

Undergraduate and Graduate

Level of Workshop

Intermediate

Ottawa PCW 3 - Narrative candour in workplace feedback conversations: What do ‘little stories’ mobilise in the learner and for the medical profession?

Date: 22 August 2026
Time: 09:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Location: Austria Center, Vienna
Fee: €104 + VAT

Presenters: Margaret Bearman¹, Elizabeth Molloy², Lara Varpio³

¹Deakin University, Docklands, Australia. ²University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. ³Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, USA

Background

Assessment for learning emphasises feedback conversations but, despite best intentions, medical educators tend to deliver well-meaning monologues in these conversations that position themselves as superhuman.

Thus, feedback conversations are less than effective, and they can build the expectation that when a learner graduates, a doctor must ‘have all the answers’.

This workshop unpacks the pedagogic technique of narrative candour or “…exposing the little stories of practice –those that are less than ideal – uncertain, unresolved, wonky and possibly mundane. Such little stories work against the core ideas of medical practice being centred on selfless superhumans.” (Bearman, Molloy and Varpio, 2025, p 1).

Drawing from narrative theory, narrative candour provides one way of inviting a two-way assessment conversation through reducing the ‘all knowledgeable’ position by exposing the doubts, the unknowable, and the day-to-day challenges of healthcare practice. And through these ‘little stories’, educators may also reduce the burnout inducing myths of the superhuman doctor.

Bearman M, Molloy E, Varpio L. Narrative candour: Learning from diverse stories of imperfect medical practice. Med Educ. 2025; 1-8. doi: 10.1111/medu.70005

Who Should Participate

This workshop is designed for those interested in workplace assessment and theory-informed approaches to feedback.

Structure Of Workshop

After an interactive orientation to feedback and narrative candour, participants will, in a mix of small and large groups:

Analyse illustrative examples of workplace assessment conversations
Interrogate their own experiences and reflect on the difficult issues of power and vulnerability in feedback conversations
Rehearse employing different narrative candour techniques in their own feedback practices to encourage the use of ‘little stories’
Discuss how narrative candour might shift an individual’s practice as well as the cultural myths of medicine.

Intended Outcomes

By the end of the workshop, participants are intended to be able to:

Define narrative candour and its possible manifestations in feedback conversations.
Debate when and where narrative candour might be employed within the context of feedback conversations in healthcare assessment.
Experiment with approaches that encourage narrative candour within feedback conversations.
Discuss how narrative candour may mobilise broader cultural change beyond healthcare assessment encounters.

Theme or Track

Ottawa (Assessment) Theme 5 – Impact and consequences of assessment

Phase of Education

Generic

Level of Workshop

Intermediate

Ottawa PCW 4 - Bridging the Gap: Low-Cost Authentic Assessment Strategies for Health Professions Education in LMICs

Date: 22 August 2026
Time: 13:30 PM – 16:30 PM
Venue: Austria Center, Vienna
Fee: €104 + VAT

Presenters: Nazar Haddad¹, Baseem Ali², Hilal Al-Saffar³

¹University of Basrah, Basrah, Iraq. ²Aliraqia University, Baghdad, Iraq. ³University Of Alkafeel, Najaf, Iraq

Background

The effectiveness of health professions education (HPE) is increasingly judged by its ability to produce competent graduates.

In Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), implementing authentic assessment is complicated by the Resource-Authenticity Paradox: a lack of faculty time, infrastructure, and funds necessitates reliance on less authentic, knowledge-based tests.

This disparity risks misalignment between curriculum and real-world competency. To address this, the workshop “Bridging the Gap” empowers educators to become catalysts for change within their constraints.

This masterclass is explicitly designed to address the challenge of implementing authentic assessment in low-resource settings by exploring practical, affordable, and scalable solutions.

Who Should Participate

HPE faculty, curriculum developers, assessment committee members, and clinical supervisors in LMICs/Resource-limited settings.

Structure Of Workshop

Session 1: Diagnosing the Assessment Landscape (45 min) The session introduces the “authenticity gap.” Participants engage in
Activity 1: Local Context Mapping, using a simple grid (Authenticity vs. Cost) to plot their existing assessment methods and identify competencies currently unassessed due to resource constraints.
Session 2: Toolkit of Low-Cost Authentic Assessments (90 min) This core session focuses on “Contextualized Fidelity.”
Activity 2: Designing the Paper-Based WBA Tool is a hands-on exercise where groups create a one-page, customized Workplace-Based Assessment (WBA) rubric (Mini-CEX or DOPS) that uses explicit, observable behaviors and includes a space for written feedback.
Activity 3: Leveraging the Oral Exam shifts focus to clinical reasoning, with pairs drafting “trigger questions” tailored to assess competency in local resource-prioritization challenges. We also briefly note using basic smartphone features for documentation.
Session 3: Implementation and Action Planning (45 min) The final segment ensures knowledge translation and focuses on integration into the larger Assessment systems and programmes.
Activity 4: The 30-Day Implementation Plan requires participants to individually commit to a practical next step by completing a template that specifies the chosen low-cost tool, target group, minimal resources required and the key local stakeholder for approval.

Intended Outcomes

Participants will be able to design and implement at least two low-cost authentic assessment tools and develop an action plan for their immediate curricular integration.

Theme or Track

Ottawa (Assessment) Theme 2 – Alignment, sampling, test selection and design

Phase of Education

Undergraduate & Graduate

Level of Workshop

Intermediate

Ottawa PCW 5 - Thorny issues in contemporary online assessment: Navigating challenges without getting spiked

Date: 22 August 2026
Time: 13:30 PM – 16:30 PM
Venue: Austria Center, Vienna
Fee: €104 + VAT

Presenters: Mary Lawson¹, Katharine Boursicot², Pavla Simerska Taylor³, Kirsty Freeman4, Sandra Kemp5, Rashmi Watson6

¹Consultant, Melbourne, Australia. ²risr, Singapore, Singapore. ³Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia. ⁴University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. 5University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia. 6Curtin University, Perth, Australia

Background

Online testing is integral to contemporary health professional assessment. Its conduct presents complex and challenging issues that educators and institutions must address.

These “thorny issues” can create difficulties for all stakeholders, requiring careful navigation to prevent negative outcomes and ensure effectiveness.

Our adoption of online testing has rapidly accelerated. We now face challenges of assessing in this modality.

This workshop provides opportunities for participants to explore the following (often overlooked) issues and develop strategies to address them effectively:

AI and test design and marking
Cost-effectiveness arguments
Security and academic integrity
Roles and skills required to deliver
Equity of access and participation

Who Should Participate

This workshop will meet the needs of those already heavily involved and responsible for online testing at a policy and practice level. The student voice will also be welcomed in this workshop.

Structure Of Workshop

Ice-breaker – all participants to determine their level of experience and responsibility and promote cross-organisational sharing. (10 minutes)
Island of content – outlining the workshop scope and highlighting the key contemporary issues / how they impact assessment practices and integrity. (20 minutes)
Small group analysis of current context – all participants analyse and critique the workshop topics as applicable to their context and circumstances. (30 minutes)
Plenary and feedback – presentations and sharing of the range of strategies identified. (30 minutes)
Small group development of strategies – for all participants to engage in consensus building around best practice guidelines for action on each of the workshop themes. (45 Minutes)
Voting activity – for whole of group ranking focussed on co-creating a prioritised set of practice guidelines. (30 minutes)
Summary / next steps – identification and sharing of at least one best practice guideline applicable to the participant’s own organisation. (15 minutes)

Intended Outcomes

By participating in this workshop participants will:

Elevate their awareness of contemporary issues in online assessment particularly related to AI, resourcing, and academic integrity.
Have the opportunity to critique these organisational and operational issues within their own context.
Have the opportunity to compare their own organisational and operational responses to those of other participants.
Have developed recommendations for improvement to take back to their own organisations and apply in practice.

Theme or Track

Ottawa (Assessment) Theme 3 – Test delivery, scoring and standard setting

Phase of Education

Generic

Level of Workshop

Intermediate

Ottawa PCW 6 - Confronting and Reducing Bias in Assessment for Competency-based Health Professions Education

Date: 22 August 2026
Time: 13:30 PM – 16:30 PM
Venue: Austria Center, Vienna
Fee: €104 + VAT

Presenters: Eric Holmboe¹, Lyuba Konopasek², Jung Kim³

¹Intealth and FAIMER, Phoenixville, USA. ²FAIMER, Philadelphia, USA. ³New York University, New York, USA

Background

Assessment is essential to professional development and competency-based health professions education.

Assessment provides the information and guidance needed to provide high-quality feedback, support coaching and the creation of individualized learning plans, inform progress decisions, determine appropriate supervision levels, and, most importantly, help ensure patients and families receive high-quality, safe care.

One of the most significant challenges in assessment is the persistent and pernicious effects of bias.

Learners from diverse backgrounds, including those from racial/ethnic groups typically underrepresented in medicine (URiM) and those from other groups often marginalized by bias in assessment (e.g., women, people who identify as sexual and gender minorities, people living with disabilities, international medical graduates, and more), face additional and unwarranted obstacles in their professional development.

Studies from around the globe have documented significant assessment biases in health professions education (HPE), from selection processes for training programs to assessment of clinical competence.

This body of research highlights the urgent need for the HPE community to develop methods and tools training programs should use to identify, address, and reduce bias in their own assessment programs.

This pre-course, provided in four sections, will provide evidence-based, practical methods and techniques to help programs reduce assessment bias.

Who Should Participate

Any HPE leader and/or educator involved in assessment across the continuum.

Structure Of Workshop

Theory burst (TB) of key issues affecting the quality of work-based assessment (WBA) – Small group exercise – participants will evaluate of one of their WBA tools
TB covering key types and sources of bias in assessment and their impacts on professional development – Large group conversation.
TB on methods and tools to identify various forms of assessment bias in HPE training programs. – Small group activity and discussion (with worksheet provided) of participant’s current challenges with assessment bias in their own program. – Small group report outs and reflections. 4. TB on recommended, evidence-based approaches to reduce assessment bias by faculty and programs – Small group discussion on how participants can apply the approaches in their own program. Each participant will create personal action plan, followed by large group Q&A.

Intended Outcomes

Practical approaches, methods, and tools to confront and reduce assessment bias

Theme or Track

Ottawa (Assessment) Theme 5 – Impact and consequences of assessment

Phase of Education

Undergraduate and Graduate

Level of Workshop

Intermediate

Ottawa PCW 7 - Exploring interactive, real-time assessment with AI: towards trustworthy “virtual patients” and “virtual preceptors”

Date: 23 August 2026
Time: 09:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Venue: Austria Center, Vienna
Fee: €104 + VAT

Presenters: Brian Gin, Lauren Maggio, Ahreum Lim, Ara Tekian

University of Illinois, Chicago, Chicago, USA

Background

Health professions educators are increasingly harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to make assessment more interactive, adaptive, and learner-centered.

By delivering real-time, personalized feedback, AI can offer timely “nudges” that guide learner progress and professional growth.

These innovations hinge on AI’s ability to: 1) make accurate, precise assessments of learner performance and 2) generate trustworthy, relevant feedback.

In this hands-on workshop, participants engage with two emerging AI-enabled modalities in assessment: “virtual patient” simulations that adapt to learner responses, and “virtual preceptors” that provide automated, real-time feedback (e.g. via ambient listening).

Leveraging open-source, open-access AI platforms we developed, participants will build, evaluate, and integrate these components into a unified interactive learning experience.

We will introduce strategies for evaluating and validating AI’s performance in these roles, extending the concept of entrustment and entrustable professional activities (EPAs) to assess and monitor AI’s performance of educational tasks.

Participants will leave with functional prototypes of “virtual patients/preceptors,” practical insights for implementation, and actionable plans for integrating and monitoring such AI tools within their educational programs.

Doing so, this workshop will support participants to build their technical knowledge while critically engaging with the contextual and ethical concerns that shape AI tool design in health professions education.

Who Should Participate

Clinical educators, course directors, curriculum designers, and other educators; Program directors, clerkship directors, and other administrators; Health professions trainees/learners

Structure of Workshop

Discussion – Introducing AI in assessment, feedback, and simulation. (20 mins)
Exercise – Interacting with pre-built “virtual preceptors/patients”. (20 mins)
Demo/exercise – Creating a “virtual patient”. (30 mins)
Discussion – Adapting precepting and coaching strategies to AI. (15 mins)
Demo/exercise – Creating a “virtual preceptor”. (30 mins)
Break
Exercise – Exchanging “virtual patient/preceptors,” debriefing. (20mins)
Discussion – Validating/monitoring AI assessment tools. (15 mins)
Exercise – Designing an EPA for your “virtual patient/preceptor”. (20 mins)

Intended Outcomes

Participants will leave with a:

Conceptual understanding of using AI to implement interactive assessments.
“Virtual patient” of their own design, ready to be piloted at their own institution.
“Virtual preceptor” that can provide real-time feedback on learner interactions.
Validation and monitoring strategy for ensuring the trustworthiness of AI-automated assessment and feedback.
Translational knowledge of relational and value-sensitive design skills.

Theme or Track

Ottawa (Assessment) Theme 1 – Assessment systems and programmes

Phase of Education

Undergraduate & Graduate

Level of Workshop

Introductory

Ottawa PCW 8 - How to review and redesign assessments in light of Generative AI -A practical workshop

Date: 23 August 2026
Time: 09:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Venue: Austria Center, Vienna
Fee: €104 + VAT

Presenters: David Kok¹, Joanne Russell¹, Sam Brondfield²

¹University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. ²University of California San Francisco ,San Francisco, USA

Background

The evolving capabilities of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) pose a significant threat to educational assessment integrity. Specifically, GenAI’s capacity to generate outputs indistinguishable from human work has prompted the need for global assessment reform to assure learning in this GenAI era.

While various educational bodies have developed principles to guide this reform, applying these can be challenging due to the complex and unprecedented nature of the task. Educators need support in the form of practical tools that can be implemented rapidly and at scale.

This workshop outlines a streamlined framework that can be utilised to appraise and mitigate GenAI risk in educational assessment. Participants will then practice applying a series of inter-related tools that can be used to facilitate assessment (re)design in their local contexts.

Who Should Participate

Health professional educators of any level who are involved in designing and/or delivering assessments

Structure of Workshop

Introduction (10 mins)
The problem in context – Case study analysis – Small group discussion of assessment case studies- identifying weaknesses and strengths of each in an AI era, followed by a moderated cross floor discussion. (25 mins)
AI risk assessment tools and their application – Presentation of core tools followed by individual application task (applying learnings to their own context). (35 mins)
Break. (10 mins)
Preserving assessment integrity in light of AI – Risk-based approach to preserving assessment integrity. (30 mins)
Small group activity – Giving a new life to old assessments – Participants will work together to review and redesign assessments from their current programs. (25 mins)
Strategic brainstorming activity – Open floor, moderated discussion of individual contextual challenges (e.g., resourcing, time, support) and how best to apply learnings to Department-wide strategy. (20 mins)
Summary, take-home points. (15 mins)

Intended Outcomes

Upon completion, participants will be able to:

Identify design features associated with risk and integrity in assessment, in this era of GenAI
Evaluate the assessment integrity risks posed by GenAI for individual assessments (which can inform redesign priorities when applied across units/programs)
(Re)design high-risk assessments to mitigate risk and enhance integrity.
Share assessment integrity learnings locally to inform departmental strategy.

Theme or Track

Ottawa (Assessment) Theme 1 – Assessment systems and programmes

Phase of Education

Generic

Level of Workshop

Intermediate

Ottawa PCW 9 - Programmatic Assessment for Learning (PAL) of Clinical Reasoning: Translating Principles into Practice Across Complex Systems and Contexts

Date: 23 August 2026
Time: 09:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Venue: Austria Center, Vienna
Fee: €104 + VAT

Presenters: Dario Torre¹, Sylvia Heenemann², Eric Holmboe³, Lyuba Konopasek⁴

¹University of Turin, Turin, Italy. ²Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands. ³Intealth,Philadelphia, USA. ⁴FAIMER, Philadelphia, USA

Background

Programmatic Assessment for Learning (PAL) provides a coherent, longitudinal, and feedback-rich framework that supports learner growth and defensible decisions.

Building on AMEE Guide No. 174 (Torre & Schuwirth, 2024) and recent international experience, this interactive three-hour workshop bridges PAL theory and practice through the lens of clinical reasoning, a complex, developmental, and context-dependent competency.

PAL emphasizes constructive alignment between learning and assessment as a dynamic, interconnected system. Its five guiding principles, longitudinality, triangulation, proportionality, feedback, and learner agency, require thoughtful integration into authentic educational practice.

The workshop applies systems and complexity thinking to reframe assessment as a dynamic adaptive system, explores global adaptations of PAL across cultural and regulatory contexts, and uses clinical reasoning as an exemplar for embedding assessment within a programmatic structure that supports longitudinal growth and defensible decisions.

Participants will use a structured PAL Design Map to analyze their local contexts, align system components, and co-create designs integrating learning, assessment, and feedback.

Who Should Participate

Medical and health-professions educators, curriculum and assessment leaders, educational researchers involved in CBME and PAL

Structure of Workshop

The three-hour session begins with a 10-minute welcome and overview to establish shared goals, followed by a 20-minute introduction framing PAL as a complex adaptive system and a 15-minute discussion of assessment methods for clinical reasoning.

Participants then engage in 30 minutes of small-group design work using the PAL Design Map, followed by two 15-minute international case examples from the Netherlands and the United States.

After a short break, participants spend 30 minutes refining their designs and addressing contextual implementation challenges.

The workshop concludes with a 30-minute plenary synthesis and discussion, leaving participants with a tangible, context-ready PAL Design Map to guide implementation and sustain the global movement toward programmatic assessment for learning.

Intended Outcomes

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

Explain how PAL principles embody systems thinking and complexity.
Analyze international examples of PAL implementation for clinical reasoning.
Design a PAL framework for assessing clinical reasoning using the PAL Design Map.
Identify contextual enablers, barriers, and strategies for successful implementation.
Plan next steps for piloting or scaling PAL within their own institutional or cultural setting.

Theme or Track

Ottawa (Assessment) Theme 1 – Assessment systems and programmes

Phase of Education

Undergraduate and Graduate

Level of Workshop

Intermediate

Ottawa PCW 10 - Maximising the impact of your OSCE: design, data and decision-making

Date: 23 August 2026
Time: 13:30 PM – 16:30 PM
Venue: Austria Center, Vienna
Fee: €104 + VAT

Presenters: Rikki Goddard-Fuller¹, Matt Homer²

¹Christie Institute for Cancer Education, Manchester, UK. ²School of Education, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

Background

The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) has long served as the foundation for high-stakes performance assessment in medical education.

In recent years, technological advancements have introduced new possibilities to enhance the authenticity of OSCEs, facilitate online delivery, improve scoring accuracy, and automate the processing of standard setting and related metrics.

Despite these innovations, challenges persist when it comes to interpreting quality markers within OSCEs and making informed decisions based on these markers.

Specifically, ensuring robust and defensible decision-making in the face of concerns about OSCE quality requires a careful triangulation of best practices across several domains: station design principles, scoring methodologies, and standard setting approaches.

By integrating these elements, educators can strive to deliver assessments that are both authentic and rigorous.

Who Should Participate

Colleagues who have responsibility for OSCE station design, delivery and analysis. This workshop is designed to engage colleagues from a range of health and educational professional backgrounds.

Structure of Workshop

Critical review of best evidence: this highly interactive workshop begins with an overview of state-of-the-art station design and standard setting, followed by practical exercises to understand approaches to scoring.
Rapid review of psychometric indicators: interpretation of whole exam and station-level psychometric indicators to gain confidence in evaluating OSCE quality
Exploration of complex ‘problem cases’: Real-world scenarios will be explored to prompt collaborative analysis and decision making, including the use of conjunctive standards, ‘extreme’ examiner behaviours, multi-site variation and station remediation. Each case is designed to facilitate critical review and identify practical solutions.

Intended Outcomes

Participants will have the opportunity to strengthen their skills in identifying and analysing stations within the OSCE that are underperforming. The workshop will guide participants through complex decision-making processes related to the management of these stations. Attendees will be encouraged to explore various strategies, including the modelling of potential outcomes and the assessment of possible consequences, to inform robust and evidence-based decisions. The workshop will conclude with a comprehensive summary of the key actions discussed, along with practical ‘top tips’ designed to support participants in applying the workshop’s learning points to their own OSCE assessments.

Theme or Track

Ottawa (Assessment) Theme 4 – Post test psychometric analysis and Quality Improvement

Phase of Education

Generic

Level of Workshop

Intermediate

Ottawa PCW 11 - “How we assess signals what we value”: Inclusive Assessments To Uphold Professional Standards Across Contexts

Date: 23 August 2026
Time: 13:30 PM – 16:30 PM
Venue: Austria Center, Vienna
Fee: €104 + VAT

Presenters: Vishna Devi V Nadarajah¹, Gabrielle Finn², Subha Ramani³, Ardi Findyartini⁴, Riya George5,Hui Meng Er¹

¹International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. ²University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. ³Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. ⁴Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia. 5University College London, London, UK

Background

Health professions education (HPE) increasingly prepares graduates to work across diverse systems and populations while upholding professional standards.

Yet assessment practices often remain anchored and dependent upon narrow or standardised conceptions of competence that overlook the influence of culture, context, and lived experience.

Inclusive assessment reframes equity as accountability i.e. purposively designing systems of assessment that allow all learners to demonstrate competencies, capability and growth, irrespective of background.

Culture shapes how assessment, feedback, and professionalism are interpreted.

Research on the sociocultural nature of feedback emphasises that learning is co-constructed within relationships of trust, power, and belonging.

Meaningful feedback therefore requires recognition of learners’ identities, values, and contexts.

This sociocultural perspective underpins the argument that inclusive assessment is not about lowering standards but ensuring fairness, authenticity, relevance and rigour across contexts.

This interactive workshop invites educators across the learning continuum to re-examine their assessment practices, explore how inclusivity and feedback intersect, and co-design practical strategies for contextually responsive assessment systems that enhance professional standards.

Who Should Participate

Educators, clinical supervisors, assessment leads, and programme directors across UG, PG, and CPD programmes.

Structure of Workshop

Ice breaker – What we value in assessments?. (15 mins)
Interactive dialogue on current assessment practices and opportunities to improve – Review of vignettes and group reflection. (30 mins)
Micro learning session on Inclusive Assessment Practices (15 mins)
Guided redesign of current assessment using inclusive design features – Group review of scenarios and presentation/discussion (45 mins)
Micro learning session on application of sociocultural feedback principles (15 mins)
Diagnostic tool to examine institutional enablers and barriers for feedback rich learning – Group review and discussion. (30 mins)
Whole-group discussion and creation of practical commitments for implementation of inclusive assessment practices within context. (30 mins)

Note: Pre reading materials will be shared with registered participants

Intended Outcomes

Apply principles of inclusive and sociocultural feedback to design assessments that promote fairness and learner agency.
Redesign one assessment task or process to embed inclusive, feedback-rich learning.
Develop an action plan to evaluate and sustain an inclusive assessment culture within their institution.

Theme or Track

Ottawa (Assessment) Theme 1 – Assessment systems and programmes

Phase of Education

Generic

Level of Workshop

Intermediate

Book your pre-conference activities

Pre-conference activities can be booked at the time of registering for the Conference or by adding them to an existing attendee conference registration by following the “Already registered?” link on the Conference registration page.