A 13-year review of triple jump examination at the Ostrow School of Dentistry of the University of Southern California.

Abstract

Objectives: The triple jump examination (TJE) has been instituted at the Ostrow School of Dentistry of the University of Southern California (OSDUSC) since 2001 as an assessment tool of critical thinking skills for its learner-centered pedagogy. A 2013 study detailed the TJE's design, validity, and initial outcomes. The current study focused on its 13-year sustainability including a transition from in-person to hybrid TJE by assessing outcomes from the graduating Classes of 2014 through 2026.

Methods: The study was approved by the USC Institutional Review Board (#UP-21-00272-AM001). To assess sustainability, the study first examined agreements among TJE faculty raters based on a total of 10,512 TJEs given to 1872 students from the 13 classes. Next, to determine whether the effectiveness of TJE was impacted by the transition from traditional to hybrid TJE, an independent t-test was performed to examine student performance between the two exam delivery methods based on 4896 TJEs given to 864 students.

Results: The study observed a high level of agreement among faculty raters throughout the study period. The general agreement rates, exact agreement rates, and disagreement rates averaged 99.2%, 77.3%, and 0.8%, respectively. Students' TJE performance was similar between the traditional and hybrid delivery methods (p-value = 0.629 > 0.05, t critical two-tail = 2.074, t stat = 0.489).

Conclusion: The TJE at OSDUSC proves to be a sustainable and reliable instrument with high internal consistency among raters when evaluating students' performance. The transition from traditional to hybrid TJE has no impact on the TJE's effectiveness.