MRD's approach: Ideally suited to support Future Earth research agenda in mountains

Both Future Earth and Mountain Research and Development (MRD) aim to support production and dissemination of knowledge for sustainable development. As shown in Future Earth’s Strategic Research Agenda 2014, the global research community has begun to acknowledge its societal role and the need for a new type of research in which scientists link disciplines and coproduce transformation knowledge with stakeholders. Future Earth has defined three research themes that conceptualize the issues to be dealt with at the same time as the way in which this should be done. In many ways, MRD’s policy has made the journal a forerunner of Future Earth’s stipulated “step-change in research”. Indeed, MRD’s section policies aim to support similar contents and ways of producing these forms of knowledge. MRD publishes “systems knowledge” in its MountainResearch section, “target knowledge” in its MountainAgenda section, and “transformation knowledge” in its MountainDevelopment section. Each of these sections has dedicated review criteria to assess and enhance the quality of the knowledge presented in the papers. In this poster, we provide examples from each of the three sections of what the knowledge types look like, how they are assessed, and how they contribute to the three Future Earth themes.

Improving the Assessment of Communication Skills at the Swiss Federal Licensing Exam: Results of a Student's Needs Assessment

Introduction With a three year project the assessment of communication skills within the Swiss Federal Licensing Examinations (FLE) shall be improved. As a first step a needs assessment among communication experts and medical students of the Swiss Medical Faculties will be performed. In this presentation the results of the students’ needs assessment will be presented. Methods A bilingual student’s online questionnaire will be developed by an expert panel taking relevant literature, the Swiss Catalogue of Learning Objectives and other consensus statements for communication (e.g., the European and Basler consensus statements) into account. With a think aloud study response process validity evidence will be sought. The questionnaire will focus on the following topics related to communication skills: (1) What has been taught?, (2) What has been assessed in the faculty exams?, (3) What has been assessed in the FLE?, (4) What should have been assessed in the FLE and how should the assessment be improved? Results Results of the students’ needs assessment will be available by the end of 2015 and be presented. Conclusions/ Take-home message We hope for valuable input for improving the assessment of communications skills within the FLE also from the students’ side. Results of the needs assessment from the students and experts will be combined and taken as input for an international expert symposium on how to improve the communication skills assessment within the FLE.