Abstract:

Teaching ophthalmology at the 800 level to students online is a challenge in itself, but providing an assessment process that is both of value to the students and discriminating to their future employers, increases the level of complexity considerably.

As part of the on-going evolution of our postgraduate diploma/master of ophthalmology course which is taught jointly by the University of Otago and the University of Sydney, we have had to constantly alter both the methods of assessment and the methods of delivering the online content. This paper will discuss some of the innovative methods of assessment that we have introduced and the results of two recent studies evaluating the effectiveness of our approach.

Keywords:

Ophthalmology, distance teaching, online assessment.