A Practical Approach to a Realistic Problem: Rapid Blueprinting a Progress Test for Veterinary Medicine in North America

Abstract

A blueprint is a template for an assessment that outlines the knowledge, skills, attributes, species, and systems to be assessed and the respective weightings (percentage of the assessment) for the key content areas. This is a foundational step in building content validity for an assessment method. The rapid blueprinting process is reported to be a quick and cost-effective approach to developing a blueprint that consists of two phases. The first is an in-person advisory committee meeting consisting of educational experts and key stakeholders (10–15 people) to build the framework of the assessment, based on identified foundational knowledge and skills (common across schools) at a specific time point (e.g., graduation). Key documents used to guide these discussions could include information on the type of assessment (low-stakes or high-stakes assessments), the types of items to be used (i.e., multiple-choice questions), and competency frameworks from which to build the assessment (i.e., the Competency-Based Veterinary Education framework and the Council on Education competencies). The second phase involves engaging the broader community in a validation step, via a modified Delphi procedure, to review the content and provide emphasis on those areas. Here, we outline the steps of the rapid blueprinting process to build a test blueprint for academic veterinary medicine progress test in North America. This method could assist both schools and post-graduate veterinary specialty colleges in building test or curriculum blueprints in a rapid, cost-effective manner and to develop validity evidence for the use and interpretation of test scores.