This work package is central for the development of assessment tools of teaching and learning processes of pharmacy studies, i.e. KREF and OSCE, and validation of the outcomes-based assessment methodology. A number of interconnected activities are envisioned, which are aimed at human resources and technical capacity development for administration and quality assurance of KREF and OSCE as well as the use of these tests as quality assurance tools of pharmacy programs at BiH universities.

BiH and EU teaching staff will work collaboratively to design a sufficient number of case studies and questions (items) databases, of adequate quality and relevance, which will be uploaded in the Case studies virtual library as a part of E-platform. Outcomes-based assessment tools developed will be validated on an appropriate student sample. After test validation, and necessary iterations, the assessment tools developed will be available for pilot programs implementation.

Administration of both large scale knowledge retention testing and objective structured clinical examination requires a sufficient number of technical staff, adequate office space, as well as the necessary equipment. In order to develop technical capacities at the participating BiH universities, specific IT equipment purchase will be conducted in the Project Year 1. 

Results and experience gained through pilot programs administration and data evaluations will be employed to create recommendations for further KREF and OSCE improvement. In addition we will identify the ways in which outputs obtained through KREF and OSCE testing may be used for curriculum mapping and continuous quality improvement in pharmaceutical professions education. 

Development of relevant supporting rules and regulations necessary for the successful institutionalization of KREF and OSCE will be initiated at the individual faculty level based on draft documents produced by the IQPharm consortium.

Project activities will be also conducted through:

• involvement of the EU and BiH project team members in the collaborative activities of the project working groups responsible for experiential education development and quality assurance, development of relevant educational resources and quality documents;
• engagement of the EU academic staff in teaching activities in the updated experiential education;
• contribution of the EU project team members in meetings and Open Day events which will be organized at each of the BiH HEIs;
• structured study visits of the key BiH project team members to each EU partner HEIs and their practical placement sites (2 visits in the first, and 2 visits in the second project year) to explore and discuss different approaches to experiential education in pharmacy education; quality assurance requirements related to EE, experiences related to its development and delivery and models for teaching competencies development and evaluation. Programmes of the structured study visits and relevant reports will be prepared by the host institution project team and approved by the Project Steering Committee. Relevant presentations and reports will be issued and published on the project website;
• Individual study visits of the BiH academic staff to EU partner institutions aimed at teaching competencies development through job shadowing and participation in the relevant educational activities;
• Intensive collaboration between the BiH HEIs and associated partner institutions as well as other relevant stakeholders from different sectors across the workforce in order to develop and implement necessary improvements of pharmacy graduate competencies and employability in the workforce through the proposal of free modules (round tables / panel discussion on the selected topics will be organized).
• Following the pilot application of well-designed examination including OSCE in evaluating professional competencies of pharmacy students at the end of the study, a relevant Evaluation Report will be issued which will provide input for the preparation of OSCE-based recommendations on advancing current professional examination and transforming licensing examination.

WP Leader: University of Split