The structured oral self-directed learning evaluation: one method of evaluating the clinical reasoning skills of occupational therapy and physiotherapy students

The Structured Oral Self-directed Learning Examination (SOSLE) is used to evaluate the clinical reasoning skills of occupational therapy (OT) and physiotherapy (PT) students. It is an oral examination which evaluates a student's problem-solving ability, self-directed learning skills, knowledge level and self-assessment ability. The three parts of the examination are conducted over a 24-hour period. Validation of this instrument was carried out in two groups of OT and PT undergraduate students over two consecutive years (Year 1--n = 20) (Year 2--n = 18). Inter-rater reliability correlations varied from 0.61 to 0.78 the first year to 0.85 to 0.99 in the second year. The results obtained from the SOSLE were also compared to written and tutorial marks obtained in the same course. Pearson Correlation Coefficients (PCC) among mean SOSLE and two written paper scores ranged from 0.0-0.05 (Year 1) to 0.0-0.1 (Year 2). The PCC among the mean SOSLE and tutorial performance scores were 0.57 (Year 1) and 0.0 (Year 2). The results show that good agreement between raters can be reached using this evaluation method. However, the poor correlations between the SOSLE and the other methods of evaluation may show that different skills are being evaluated. Further validity testing needs to be carried out to confirm that this tool is measuring process oriented skills.