Consulting Staff
John R. Boulet, Ph.D.
William P. Burdick, M.D.,
M.S.Ed.
Stacey Friedman, Ph.D.
Danette McKinley, Ph.D.
John J. Norcini, Ph.D.
Marta van Zanten, Ph.D.,
M.Ed.
Customized Services
FAIMER’s customized services focus its considerable expertise on meeting the needs of educational institutions, professional organizations, and accrediting agencies worldwide. Consultations and instructional services are tailored to meet the needs of those responsible for health professions education programs and for the assessment of undergraduate students, graduate trainees, and practicing clinicians. FAIMER offers these services in the following key areas:
Through consultation, FAIMER staff members discuss your unique challenges and provide you with the guidance and resources to meet identified objectives. Instructional services provide lectures and/or workshops conducted by FAIMER staff at the venue of your choosing.
Distance Learning
FAIMER also offers
health professions education courses on-line through:
FAIMER staff are subject matter experts with more than 70 years of combined experience in the assessment of physicians and in licensure and certification testing. They are active in researching the quality of medical education, including the impact of accreditation on student outcomes. They also serve on the editorial boards of peer-reviewed journals in their areas of expertise.
For personal attention, please e-mail FAIMERServices@faimer.org.
Assessment
Consultations and instruction that assist educational institutions and professional organizations with the design; implementation; and periodic evaluation of assessments of knowledge, skills, and competence.
Areas of Expertise:
- Designing an assessment system: Blueprinting
- Instrument design
- Multiple-choice item writing
- Designing objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs)
- Essays and short-answer questions
- Clinical and oral examinations
- Work-place based assessments
- Evaluating professionalism
- Scoring systems and equating
- Test analysis: Item analysis and test reliability
- Standard setting methodology for both multiple-choice and performance-based tests
Accreditation
Consultation and instruction that assist:
- Accrediting agencies and professional organizations with outcomes research, yielding meaningful data that describe the cross-sectional and longitudinal impact of their accreditation systems
- Educational institutions undergoing accreditation
- Organizations responsible for creating, implementing, and evaluating the validity of accreditation systems and associated quality assurance decisions
Areas of Expertise:
- Determining best practices in accreditation systems
- Training and monitoring of site visitors. Verification of site visitors’ credentials.
- Training of report writers
- Developing effective, valid, and defensible accreditation protocols
- Developing standards
- Writing standards to address procedural and resource elements of education, or to measure student achievement and outcomes.
- Using standards to specify exact requirements that a school must meet, and to encourage innovation and quality improvement.
Educational Research
Instruction that provides an overview of the processes involved in each stage of educational research and that facilitates collaboration with researchers and statisticians at their own institutions and elsewhere.
Topics covered:
- Conducting a literature review
- Evaluating published research
- Research design and methodology—qualitative and quantitative
- Sampling
- Data collection (e.g., interviews, surveys, focus groups)
- Instrument selection/design
- Database design and data analysis
- Descriptive statistics
- Inferential statistics
Consultation that provides guidance on all phases of educational research and evaluation in the health professions, including the development of research protocols, instrument design, and analysis of data.
Program Evaluation
Consultation and instruction that use participants’ own institutional programs to:
- Provide a comprehensive approach to learning about program evaluation
- Assist in the design and testing of innovative program evaluation methods
- Better understand the impact of education programs and faculty development, and their link to longer-term objectives.
Areas of Expertise:
- Purposes of program evaluation
- Identification of stakeholders
- Program evaluation models
- Identification of outputs and outcomes
- Program rationale/theory development
- Quantitative and qualitative measurement tools used in program evaluation
- Methods of analysis
- Dissemination of program evaluation results