Arunaz Kumar¹
Mahbub Sarkar¹, Paul Fullerton¹ and PETER BARTON¹
1 Monash University

Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) format has been utilised in assessment of clinical skills of medical students for the last three decades, recently including an online component introduced at various sites through the pandemic. Recognition of social and material aspects (socio-materiality) of learning and assessment often get ignored in medical education; even though these are crucial components of assessments, they are seen as background objects, with lack of acknowledgment of their existence (1). 

The recent pandemic that impacted human communication (such as online meetings/ work from home, online medical student teaching/assessments) brought into focus the importance of material objects and human connections; especially in the context of OSCE/ online assessment where both social communication (such as history taking, counselling, prescribing) and objects/ tools (physical exam, tests, technological devices, setting and surrounding materials) are required. This workshop will assist participants gain understanding of socio-materiality in clinical assessment with a view to improve the examination process. They will get insights into various components of socio-materiality – including assemblage, agency, emergence, practice, symmetry and constitutive entanglements between the social and material forces. 

3. Workshop format, including participant engagement methods -
Participants will be offered a mock OSCE station transcript and a video of the OSCE to review socio-materiality in small group tasks of 5-6 participants. They will be asked to identify and consider aspects of socio materiality in their respective groups and how it may impact examination process with focus on student learning/ performance. 

4. Who should participate? 

5. Level of workshop (beginner / intermediate / advanced)
This may be suited to all levels from beginner to advanced. 

By participating in the workshop, health professional educators involved in assessment design and delivery, will gain insights into the impact of social factors (patient/peer/ colleague interactions) and materials like technology (computers/ tablets used for assessment tasks) and other objects(like layout of the room, furniture, such as patient couch, curtains, desks, stationary items, clinical exam tools, and printed information like blood test results, radiological investigations, prescriptions, protocols, patient information sheets). They may get insights and take-home skills to improve assessment design through the group tasks and interactions with other participants. They may acquire skills to apply sociomaterility to their clinical assessments and develop an understanding of how socio-materility aspects of assemblage, agency, emergence, practice, symmetry and constitutive entanglements of social and material factors effect the examination process. 

Number of participants 
Approximately 40 participants 

References (maximum three) 

7. Up to three references 

Fenwick T. Sociomateriality in medical practice and learning: attuning to what matters. Med Educ. 2014 Jan;48(1):44-52. doi: 10.1111/medu.12295. PMID: 24330116. 

Rees CE, Ottrey E, Barton P, Dix S, Griffiths D, Sarkar M, Brooks I. Materials matter: Understanding the importance of sociomaterial assemblages for OSCE candidate performance. Med Educ. 2021 Aug;55(8):961-971. doi: 10.1111/medu.14521. Epub 2021 Mar 23. PMID: 33651462.