International Congress of College and Academy Presidents and Masters
Cape Town : 1 – 3 April 2012
Please see below for the attached scientific programme.

International guests who still require hotel accommodation, please contact Patricia Bredenkamp.

Slide presentations to be submitted by 23 March 2012, to Lize Trollip.

Alvin or Merril Kushner will attend to your needs if you would like to do some sight-seeing while in the Cape Peninsula. They can be contacted at info@caperainbow.com. Their website is www.caperainbow.com.

Please see the attached document.

Examination applications are currently closed.

Applications will open on Tuesday, May 1, 2012.

No applications can be submitted at this time for the August/September 2012 set of examinations. Please note that the examination fee will be increased from 1 June 2012. The new fee structure will be available on the website from 1 May 2012 and all applications for this set of examinations must be submitted with relevant proof and documentation by 15 June 2012. Please also note that the site will close at midnight on Friday, 15 June 2012 and NO LATE APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED.

Dates: 6, 8 and 10 February 2012

Venues: CMSA Cape Town, IALCH and CMSA Johannesburg

Speakers: Professor Katharine Boursicot SGUL, Dr David Sales

Topic: Item Writing


Overview of the workshop:

The CMSA has previously presented workshops on Forms of Assessment (2008), Blueprinting and MCQ’s (2009), Principles of Assessment (2010) and Standards Setting (2011). 

The 2012 workshop was a hands-on workshop to define the statement of purpose of each examination and to do discipline specific item writing (as requested by delegates at the 2011 workshop) excercises.  This was largely successful and most delegates were enthusiastic that their college set up an examination committee to blueprint their examinations, define the purpose for each examination and ensure the validity of their examination.  A document on house styles has been included for ease of reference and will be referred to the Examinations and Credentials committee for inclusion as a CMSA policy document.

The attached presentation has an example for defining a blueprint (slide 13) and an example to be used as a sampling grid (slide 15).  These are freely available on the web and colleges may use them.

It is desirable that by the next workshop (2013 – 2014) all colleges have blueprinted all of their examinations and that the validity of their examinations be defensible.

Feedback from delegates:

Delegate comments were very positive about the format of the hands-on workshop and were enthusiastic about the item writing exercises that were done.

Delegates will be contacted to submit their items to the Academic Registrar in electronic format using the template supplied. A testing bank will be developed and used as a starting point for evaluation

Items of interest and links for further reading:

GMC-UK blueprint form from the www.gmc-uk.org website.


The way forward:

Future workshops/examination committee metings should be designed to include:Basic PsychometricsDesigning a Programme of AssessmentQA BlueprintItems Test StatisticsItem Statistics, SEM (Standard Error of Measurement)Standard SettingValidityWBAs Mini CEX - CruessDOPsCase-based FeedbackMultisource FeedbackSkills AssessmentExaminer training and Certification

Mrs Ann Vorster
Academic Registrar
February 2012

DCH(SA) candidates please take note:

The clinical and oral examination will be held in Pietermaritzburg.