Internationally, medical education has developed in the direction of competence orientation the last decades. This process was recently adopted in Germany with the implementation of the National Competency-Based Learning Catalog (NKLM), which includes learning objectives for medical education

Palliative medical curricula were included in the Medical Licensing Regulations 2009 as the 13th cross-sectional area (QB). Surveys at medical schools showed that the development of this QB is very heterogeneous.

A good medical discussion requires a high level of communicative competence from physicians which is learn best with application-related, disciplinary practical examples from the daily medical routine.

Progresstests give students feedback about their knowledge growth during their studies. In medical education, peer-assisted learning and competence-based education have become increasingly important. While progresstests have proven to be a longitudinal feedback tool, there are no progression tests that have been developed in collaboration with students and that address the competence orientation of medical education.

More than 60 institutions from 7 countries are organized by UCAN to help each other create and share exam content, ensure quality assurance and develop their exams. This year’s meeting was under the motto “Future perspectives for competence-oriented and quality-assured testing in a network”.

In order to estimate the accuracy and consistency of the “passed / failed” decision, adequate evaluation procedures are required. In the study, an example of a composite test is used to analyze the reliability of the decision and to discuss consequences for an improved methodology.

In order to face the future challenges in medical assessment, institutions have to cooperate more intensively. 10 years ago, UCAN was formed as such an interinstitutional cooperation. Today 60 schools and boards from 7 countries work closely together to share their knowledge, to combine and optimize their resources and to engage in collaborative research.

Good exams are an essential part of the learning process. Top-quality items, state-of-the-art quality management and judicial security are therefore pivotal for modern assessment.

Good examinations require considerable resources. Beside medical faculties several institutions which perform assessment in postgraduate education or in other health care professions are confronted with this challenge.

Although formal mistakes and cueing are quite often in MC-questions (MCQs), support in the identification of conspicuous items by automatic algorithms is rarely known. This support is given by the web-based Item Management System (IMS), an all-in-one platform to facilitate all steps in the workflow of assessment and to provide special features for quality assurance.

The development, implementation and evaluation of assessments require considerable resources and often cannot be carried out by a single faculty/institution. Therefore some medical faculties have founded cooperation projects which mainly focus on the exchange of multiple choice questions (MCQs).

Computer-based examinations (CBE) ensure higher efficiency with respect to producibility and assessment compared to paper-based examinations (PBE). However, students often have objections against CBE and are afraid of getting poorer results in a CBE.

Faculty internal exams should reflect the strengthening of the practical relevance of medical education and are part of the final certificate. In order to gain an overview of how the “examination culture” at the medical faculties developed, a survey was conducted in autumn 2007 at all medical faculties in Germany.