The challenge
When COVID-19 made face-to-face examinations impossible, the Royal College of Psychiatrists needed an urgent solution for its Clinical Assessment of Skills and Competencies (CASC), enabling trainee psychiatrists to continue progressing into specialist training.
The existing CASC involved candidates moving through 16 clinical stations, interacting with simulated patients and being assessed by examiners. There was no established off-the-shelf platform capable of simply replicating this complex model online.
The College set an ambitious target: transform the assessment for digital delivery in just five to six months, compared with an expected programme of 18 months to two years.
The approach
Working with the College’s assessment and operational teams, CX Works founder Liam Wynne led on the platform and IT requirements and helped design the new delivery approach.
The programme used rapid prototyping and repeated pilots to test potential platforms and refine how the assessment would work in practice. Examiners, role players, invigilators and staff participated in testing, allowing the model to be improved ahead of live delivery.
A major breakthrough came from rethinking how candidates moved through the assessment. Rather than requiring all 256 participants to move simultaneously, the exam was divided into smaller eight-station circuits that could operate independently. This significantly simplified the delivery model and made the remote assessment operationally viable.
Continuous improvement and operational maturity
Go-live was the beginning rather than the end of the transformation. Feedback and experience from each examination were used to refine the technology, processes and delivery model, with a focus on making the assessment increasingly reliable, efficient and sustainable.
As the operating model matured, day-to-day delivery was progressively transferred to trained external support. This reduced the operational burden on the core exams team and allowed internal expertise to focus increasingly on assessment quality, oversight and improvement.
The outcome
The new delivery model enabled the CASC to continue throughout the pandemic and subsequently scale in response to rapidly growing demand. By 2022, candidate demand had increased by 50% year on year, while the examiner pool had grown to more than 700, demonstrating the scale of the operation required to sustain delivery.
The transformation also introduced improvements that outlasted the immediate move online. Electronic marking was found to be more reliable and faster to process than scanned marksheets, while creating greater opportunities to improve candidate feedback.
The experience went on to inform the College’s wider assessment strategy, including consideration of which innovations from digital delivery should be retained and maintaining the capability to deliver examinations online if required in future.
At a glance
5–6 months to transform the delivery model · 50% growth in candidate demand · 700+ examiners · Digital innovations retained beyond the initial transformation
The CX Works perspective
Successful assessment transformation does not end at go-live. CASC demonstrates the value of combining assessment requirements, technology and operational design, then using evidence from live delivery to continually improve the service.
It also demonstrates the importance of designing for operational maturity: moving from an intensive transformation programme towards a sustainable model in which routine delivery can be delegated, freeing specialist teams to concentrate on quality, oversight and future improvement.