Gary Cole

Gary Cole is presently Senior Researcher / Developer at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and adjunct professor at the University of Calgary. His primary interest is in evaluation, both for in-training and for exit examinations. As manager of the Educational Research Unit, he is responsible for providing oversight for the high stakes certification examinations of 68 Royal College specialties, including development, statistical analysis, research and policy initiatives. These specialties use a number of different formats, including practicals, short answer questions, multiple choice questions, orals and OSCES. Gary has been active in a number of areas in related to the evaluation in medical education: as co-chair of the Royal College Educational Research and Development Committee ; co-chair of the Assessment Track of the International Conference on Residency Education; co-coordinator of the Royal College Assessment Committee; member of the SSIH research Committee ,the Planning Committee for the Royal College International Conference on Residency Education, the Planning Committee of the Royal College Simulation Summit and the Scholarship Group of the Royal College. His areas of research have included, CanMEDS, reliability indices, test reliability, predictive performance, portfolios and simulation for evaluation in high stakes situations. His present initiatives in quality assurance of the Royal College examinations are focused on rater training for the administration of orals and OSCES and the best practices for the use of global rating scales, both analytic and holistic. His present research interests focus on the factors that most influence the validity of examinations from the perspective of candidates.