UCAN Conference 2017

The 11th UCAN conference took place under the motto “Facing Assessments in 2020” from 15th to 16th March 2017. The conference was organised as a pre-conference in Dusseldorf in cooperation with the “RIME: 5th International Conference for Research in Medical Education”. That year the conference was for the first time an international meeting, where almost 70 participants from the partner institutions and guests from other institutions exchanged experiences on how auditing challenges in the past had already been tackled together and how upcoming requirements could be mastered in the future. In the introductory words, Prof. Dr. med. Jana Jünger, Director of the Institute for Medical and Pharmaceutical Examination Questions (IMPP), Dr. med. Thomas Rotthoff on behalf of RIME and Prof. Dr. med. Martin Fischer on behalf of the GMA acknowledge the good cooperation of the UCAN assessment network as well as the jointly achieved goals that were only possible with help of the network. Distributed over the two conference days, the following interesting aspects were presented and discussed in the keynote lectures:

• Facing assessments in the past, present and future

• Current opportunities and challenges in assessments

• The Oral EDIC Exam: A Multicentre International Objective Structured Clinical Examination

• Does the medium change the message?

• Overview of Polish medical education: mixture of public and private, non-profit and commercial medical programs

• Plans for the national licensing exams in 2020 in Germany

• National assessment and the UK perspective; the long road to national examinations and licensureNational assessment and the

• UK perspective; the long road to national examinations and licensure

• The Process of Blueprinting National Examinations

In addition to the short lectures of the UCAN partners, the participants of the event also had the opportunity to participate in numerous workshops. There were workshops on the technical developments of the UCAN tools as well as diverse scientific-conceptual work meetings (eg quality assurance, creation of blueprints, testing of communicative competencies, feedback in summative examinations). In addition to the technical and scientific advisory board meeting, the participants could exchange information on a UCAN marketplace and inform themselves on various topics (eg Toolbox, SP database, student Progresstest, MME network, Merlin 2, etc.) We would like to thank you again for your coming, your cooperation and your important inputs. A scientific collaboration like UCAN thrives on productive discourse and the effort to continue working together to further improve the quality of our exams. We would also like to thank the RIME Committee and the entire Dusseldorf Orgateam for the good cooperation and the hospitable atmosphere.