Reflection on the teaching of student-centred formative assessment in medical curricula: an investigation from the perspective of medical students

Abstract Background Formative assessment (FA) is becoming increasingly common in higher education, although the teaching practice of student-centred FA in medical curricula is still very limited. In addition, there is a lack of theoretical and pedagogical practice studies observing FA from medical students’ perspectives. The aim of this study is to explore and understand ways to improve student-centred FA, and to provide a practical framework for the future construction of an FA index system in medical curricula. Methods This study used questionnaire data from undergraduate students in clinical medicine, preventive medicine, radiology, and nursing at a comprehensive university in China. The feelings of medical students upon receiving student-centred FA, assessment of faculty feedback, and satisfaction were analysed descriptively. Results Of the 924 medical students surveyed, 37.1% had a general understanding of FA, 94.2% believed that the subject of teaching assessment was the teacher, 59% believed that teacher feedback on learning tasks was effective, and 36.3% received teacher feedback on learning tasks within one week. In addition, student satisfaction results show that students’ satisfaction with teacher feedback was 1.71 ± 0.747 points, and their satisfaction with learning tasks was 1.83 ± 0.826 points. Conclusion Students as participants and collaborators in FA provide valid feedback for improving student-centred FA in terms of student cognition, empowered participation, and humanism. In addition, we suggest that medical educators avoid taking student satisfaction as a single indicator for measuring student-centred FA and to try to build an assessment index system of FA, to highlight the advantages of FA in medical curricula.