Objective: To adapt a classroom assessment technique (CAT) from an anthropology course to a diabetes module in a clinical pharmacy skills laboratory and to determine student knowledge retention from baseline.
Design: Diabetes item stems, focused on module objectives, replaced anthropology terms. Answer choices, coded to Bloom's Taxonomy, were expanded to include higher-order thinking. Students completed the online 5-item probe 4 times: prelaboratory lecture, postlaboratory, and at 6 months and 12 months after laboratory. Statistical analyses utilized a single factor, repeated measures design using rank transformations of means with a Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test.
Assessment: The CAT revealed a significant increase in knowledge from prelaboratory compared to all postlaboratory measurements (p<0.0001). Significant knowledge retention was maintained with basic terms, but declined with complex terms between 6 and 12 months.
Conclusion: The anthropology assessment tool was effectively adapted using Bloom's Taxonomy as a guide and, when used repeatedly, demonstrated knowledge retention. Minimal time was devoted to application of the probe making it an easily adaptable CAT.
Keywords: CAPE domains; Classroom assessment techniques; background knowledge probe; diabetes; knowledge retention; skills lab.