Introduction
ocular disease, ocular diseases
EVENTS
Traditional assessments involve written and oral assessments. Written assessments can be advantageous as they are a familiar tool to test the student’s comprehension of content and it is more objective in comparison to oral assessments, which increases their reliability [The university has the responsibility to ensure graduate optometrists have been equipped with relevant skills before entering the workforce. Optometric competencies include efficiently performing all optometric procedures, recognizing the importance of effective communication, demonstrating the ability to assess and interpret information, contributing to the creation of new knowledge through research, and being a reflective practitioner to ensure growth and development [Although there is a range of existing oral assessments available, there were no specific oral presentation assessments that aligned with the purpose of testing the optometry students on their knowledge and management of ocular diseases. To address this issue, The University of Western Australia (UWA) designed Scholars180, which is an oral presentation assessment for first-year optometry students. UWA’s optometry course is based on the competency standards for optometrists in Australia and New Zealand. The competency standards include communication, patient examination, diagnosis and management, and health information management. Constructive alignment was used when designing Scholars180 as it was based on the learning outcomes of a clinical unit and the objectives of the learning events in the semester. Thus, Scholars180 can help display student achievement in these competencies.For Scholars180, students received 12 weeks to prepare a short 3-minute individual oral presentation about an ocular disease to their peers and teacher. This presentation style is based on The University of Queensland’s (UQ) Three Minute Thesis (3MT) format [