Evaluating computer skills

Computer skills is a competency all residents must acquire. Electronic medical records, searching for evidence in literature databases, preparing presentations, are only a few examples where they will apply these skills.

There are at least two ways in which you can evaluate their competency: The first one would be looking at the final product, eg: the completed medical record, the search results, the final PowerPoint presentations. The second one is the process. Evaluating the process is very important because sometimes you can have a good final product through an inefficient process. For evaluating the process you would need to sit beside them while they complete it. Many times finding the time to meet with your residents to do this is not easy. This is when screen capturing software can help you. 

Using screen capturing software you resident can record all the process he or she did to reach the final product. As it is recorded as a video, you can go through it fast forwarding so it may allow you to review the process in a shorter time that it would have taken if you sat beside the resident during the actual work.

There are many screen capturing software. One that you can try is Screencast-O-Matic.

Screencast-O-Matic is a cloud based software that can be used for free, for recording up to 15 minutes of continuous capture. You can see an example of how it works below