Daniel
Zahra
Insights and Assessment in
Medical and Dental Education
I am currently Associate Professor of Assessment and Psychometrics at the University of Plymouth Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry (Faculty of Health), supporting assessment and research across all medical and dental programmes.
Working alongside amazing colleagues, I am involved in a diverse range of projects across three broad themes; assessment, equality, and integration, combining my interests in psychology, philosophy, and education.
Research
My assessment research covers the predictive validity of assessments, novel and multi-modal formats, and new approaches to standard setting. I am also interested in how students interact in simulated environments and reach consensus on clinical decisions, student's perceptions of their own capabilities across both the academic and clinical domains.
These aspects interact with equality, where my interests lie in championing equality throughout all domains of education, from equality of access to equality of opportunity and fairness in assessments.
Integrated and interprofessional education are central to improving these aspects, and carry many benefits which much of my work explores and evaluates in the medical and dental education contexts.
Teaching
In addition to my research, I have taught undergraduate and masters psychology students research methods and statistics, focusing on good experimental and qualitative research design, ethics in research, regression-based techniques and analysis of variance. I have also lectured on critical thinking, social and environmental psychology, teaching students at undergraduate and masters level.
In my current role I contribute to teaching of quantitative research design, supervise clinical education masters students, and teach undergraduate medical and dental students clinical decision making, statistics, research design, and the basics of functional neuroanatomy.
