Assessment Through Simulated Conversations: Applications in Medical and Teacher Education

Abstract

Simulated conversations (SC) are an established method for teaching and assessing professional communication competences and other clinically relevant skills in medical education. In SC, participants lead a simulated professional conversation about a predefined authentic case scenario with actors trained to portray a standardized role. Recently, the use of SC has expanded to teacher education, and it is of general relevance to all vocational and professional domains that require conversations between professional and client. The present chapter outlines the applications of SC in medical and teacher education and provides a generic blueprint of six key steps in designing SC assessments. The aim is to facilitate the transfer of SC assessments to other domains.