Blueprinting for assessment in undergraduate medical physiology curriculum

Abstract

Since long, physiology teaching has been monotonous, teacher centric, didactic type and its assessment primarily focussed on the amount of knowledge recalled by means of stereotyped written questions. A blueprint specifies weightage to various mapped topics (also known as competencies) in the syllabus. For this study, IEC approval was obtained. We aimed to prepare a blueprint for assessment in the undergraduate physiology curriculum and thereby test its utility. We found that blueprinting not only establishes a balance between teaching and learning but also improves validity, reliability and acceptability of assessments. Thus, blueprinting of undergraduate medical curriculum can help in actual execution of the Medical Council of India's Competency-Based Medical Education programme.