title: Development and testing of an assessment tool for integrated learning.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Development of integrated questions for undergraduate medical students and assessing students' capability to retain and apply basic concepts in an integrated way.
  
  
  METHODS
  Multiple choice questions, attempting to probe understanding and application of different concepts, affiliated with different subjects and topics, were developed. As a pilot these were administered to the students of third year and final year at the end of their certifying examinations as a mock test. The following year these questions were introduced in the continuous assessments and subsequently the certifying examinations (in third year) as 33% of the whole examination. Difficult indices, item analysis and internal consistency (alpha) were calculated for all the questions.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The difficulty indices of integrated questions indicated that students found the integrated questions difficult.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There was a significant change of distribution in terms of scoring for the integrated questions. Students' power to integrate showed reliable improvement when tested in the certifying examinations.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Educational Development and Microbiology, Aga Khan University, Karachi.
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Naqvi
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ahmed
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Jamil
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D002983:Clinical Competence; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D010154:Pakistan