Evaluations in Clerkship - Requirements and Frequently Asked Questions

Academy Scholar teaching evaluations are available to complete in the final week of the last Portfolio session for that year. Each year, clerks are expected to complete an Academy Scholar evaluation for each of their two portfolio teachers.

What happens if I don’t finish both of my Academy Scholar Evaluations within 15 days of the end of the course?

If a clerk does not complete a teaching evaluation for both of their Academy Scholars within the 15-day window, they will receive a notification email from the Office of Assessment and Evaluation, and a low professionalism assessment. Due to settings in MedSIS, after the 15-day window has passed, we are unable to re-open evaluations for individual students to complete evaluations.

End of Rotation evaluation forms are available to complete in the final week of a rotation. All End of Rotation evaluations must be completed within 15 days of the end of the course. Please note that grab bag and electives rotations have unique circumstances for these evaluations:

• Grab bag (ANS/EM/OHNS/OPT) evaluations are triggered to open in connection with your Mastery Exercise (ME) for that course, as there are evaluation questions asking about the exam. However, for courses without an ME, such as OPT, the 15-day window to complete the End of Rotation evaluation would be the 15 days after being in clinic. Please note that grab bag rotation evaluation completion windows will fall within the grab bag block.
• The Fourth Year Electives Course Evaluation will be available to complete at the end of the entire 14-week electives block, as there is a wide variety of electives schedules between students. As the evaluation asks questions about the entire electives rotation block, completing (or not completing) the Fourth Year Electives Course Evaluation will impact your MedSIS access to all electives assessments (see below). Please note that MedSIS access to electives assessments will only be tied to the course evaluation completion once the form is open and available to complete. Until then, you will have open MedSIS access to your electives assessments.

What happens if I don’t finish my End of Rotation/Fourth Year Electives Course Evaluation within 15 days of the end of the course?

If you do not complete the End of Rotation/Fourth Year Electives Course Evaluation within 15 days of the end of the course, you will not have MedSIS access to the details of your assessment data for that course. You can still access the overall assessment grade. Assessment data can always be accessed by contacting the Course Director of the rotation. Due to settings in MedSIS, after the 15-day window has passed, we are unable to re-open evaluations for individual students to complete evaluations.

LACT forms are available to complete at any time during a rotation. All LACT evaluations must be completed within 15 days of the end of the course/elective.

Note that for courses like Emergency, Ophthalmology, Electives, etc., this would mean the 15-day cut off period could fall within the rotation block, as there are multiple courses within the grab bag and electives blocks.

• If the 3^rd year clinical clerkship course is 2 weeks or more, a minimum of 3 LACT forms should be completed during the course.
• If the 3^rd year clinical clerkship course is less than 2 weeks, a minimum of 1 LACT form should be completed during the course. **Except Anesthesia which requires 3 LACTs.
• For each ROMP, elective and selective experience (including visiting electives) a minimum of 1 LACT form should be completed.

Note: If a clerk did not work with a sufficient number of teachers to complete the minimum number of LACTs for that rotation, they would instead be expected to complete LACTs for all teachers they worked with.

What happens if the minimum required number of LACT is not met within 15-days after the end of course/elective?

• 1^st Occurrence: Reminder letter from OAE (Office of Assessment and Evaluation).
• 2^nd Occurrence: Second reminder letter from OAE, cc’ing the Clerkship Directors
• Third Occurrence: Notification letter from the OAE. A professionalism score of 2 is recorded in MedSIS.

Next Occurrence: The ‘occurrence count’ resets after receiving the Third Occurrence. Should the student fail to complete the minimum number of LACT evaluations again to the point of receiving another low professionalism score, the Director of Program Evaluation, the Clerkship Directors and the Professionalism lead will review the case to determine if a referral to the Professionalism Lead is needed.

Please contact medsis.ume@utoronto.ca to add an instructor to MedSIS. Please do this before the 15-day cut off to provide the MedSIS team enough time to add the instructor and for you to complete the form within 15 days. You may need to use Advanced Search (“See more teachers”) to find the teacher after they have been added.

This not available for two main reasons. First, upholding the 15-day window is important for maintaining data integrity and avoiding recall bias. Second, MedSIS does not allow us to open evaluations for individual students once the deadline has passed.

If you missed the deadline for submitting an evaluation but would still like to provide a teacher or course director with feedback for their records (e.g., for future improvement or use in their promotion) you can always provide this feedback directly to the teacher or course director via email, although it would not be anonymous. If you have concerns about the teaching you received and wish to remain anonymous, we encourage you reach out to OLA and discuss your options with them. This can be done at any time.

As a general rule, you have 15 days from the end of a course. Please note that for fourth year electives, the 15-day cut off point for LACTs is different from the cut off point for Fourth Year Electives Course Evaluations.

If there is a scheduled break (i.e., December and February/March breaks) within the 15-day window, that time will not be included in the count. For example, evaluations for rotations that end immediately before the February/March break will have 23 (15+7) days to complete the rotation evaluation, to account for the weeklong break.

LACT completion is reviewed manually, and therefore the 15-day window is always tied to the end of the clinical experience as scheduled.

• For grab bag (ANS/EM/OHNS/OPT) the 15-day cut off period could fall within the rotation block, as there are multiple courses in the grab bag rotation block. Students are expected to complete the LACT evaluations within 15-days of the course.
• For electives and selectives, similar to grab bag, the 15-day cut off period is tied to the individual electives/selectives. You are expected to complete 1 LACT per elective/selective, not 1 LACT for the entire electives/selectives block.

End of Rotation/Electives/Selectives evaluations and expiry dates are controlled by the MedSIS system. Though they are set up to be available for completion in the final week of the rotation, there are some differences:

• Grab bag (ANS/EM/OHNS/OPT) course evaluations are triggered to open in connection with your ME for that course, as there are evaluation questions asking about the exam. For courses without an ME, such as OPT, the 15-day window to complete the End of Rotation evaluation would be 15 days after being in clinic, as opposed to after the ME.
• The Fourth Year Electives Course Evaluation is tied to the end of the entire 14-week electives block, as there is a wide variety of electives schedules between students. Therefore, the Fourth Year Electives Course Evaluation will be available to complete in the last week of the electives period. The evaluation asks you to reflect on all of your electives experiences.

No. You will have open MedSIS access to your electives clinical assessments until the Fourth Year Electives Course evaluation becomes available in December. MedSIS access to electives assessments will be tied to completing the course evaluation once the evaluation form is live and available to complete. Please note that once the form is live, you will no longer be able to see any electives assessments you had previous online access to until you complete the end of course evaluation.

No. The required number of completed LACT forms can be made up of any combination of faculty and/or residents on that rotation, including all faculty or all resident LACT forms.

We are actively working with the MedSIS developer to address this and expect it to be completed before the summer of 2025. Until this work is completed, please do not use the MedSIS count down as the 15-day marker. We recommend setting your own calendar reminders for completing evaluations, or completing LACT forms ASAP after the end of a rotation.

Yes. Electives (including visiting electives) and Selectives have the same completion requirements (1 LACT). Learners completing ROMP rotations are also expected to complete 1 LACT. We try to keep the system up to date, but if you cannot find your preceptor for a visiting elective in MedSIS, it is your responsibility to contact medsis.ume@utoronto.ca within the 15-day window of the course. You may need to use Advanced Search to find the teacher after they have been added.

If a clerk worked with only 1 or 2 teachers on a rotation, but the minimum number of LACTs is 3, the clerk would instead be expected to complete a LACT for each teacher they worked with. Please remember that LACTs can be completed for both faculty and residents, and that you should contact medsis.ume@utoronto.ca to add any missing teachers to the system.

If you completed LACTs for all of your teachers from a rotation and receive an occurrence letter, this was in error. Please let us know by replying to the occurrence letter email and we will rescind the occurrence.

It will not. No form can replace a LACT, or be completed in lieu of a LACT.

Sometimes clerks will complete other additional teaching evaluation forms as part of their rotation. For example, these may include end of shift preceptor evaluations, hospital-run teaching evaluations, or teaching evaluations for other schools during visiting electives. As there is no centralized, shared system of teaching evaluations, UofT does not have access to these evaluations and they do not count towards a clerk's required LACTs.

On the evaluations page, set your Status filter to 'Completed' to review all completed evaluations for a course.

If you press ‘save’ instead of ‘submit’ this retains the data on your end for you to come back to and complete, but it will not show up as a submission on our end. We recommend confirming your total submitted LACT forms by setting your Status filter to 'Completed' and reviewing completed forms before the 15-day window ends.

If you did submit the required number of LACT forms within the 15-day window, but under the wrong rotation/course in MedSIS, please notify medsis.ume@utoronto.ca to correct this.

You may have already started or completed this evaluation. You can review initiated and completed evaluations by setting your Status filter to 'In Progress' and ‘Completed’, respectively. If you would like to edit a previously submitted evaluation, or cannot see a previous In Progress or Complete evaluation for this teacher, please contact medsis.ume@utoronto.ca.

Yes. If, for example, you complete a LACT on a teacher early on in your rotation and want to update your feedback based on teaching  at the end of the rotation, you can contact medsis.ume@utoronto.ca to inquire about editing your previously completed LACT.

Each ‘occurrence notification’ email sent will have a formal letter attached. The letter will indicate if it is a second reminder or low professionalism notification. Letters for a second occurrence will state that another occurrence of not meeting the requirements will result in a recorded professionalism score of 2. Professionalism assessments issued will appear with other assessments in MedSIS.

Please note the ‘occurrence count’ resets after the third occurrence. If a student fails to complete the minimum number of LACT evaluations again to the point of receiving another low professionalism score (i.e., 6 times total), the Director of Program Evaluation, the Clerkship Directors and the Professionalism lead will review the case to determine if a referral to the Professionalism Lead is needed.

A single low professionalism score will not appear on your Medical Student Permanent Record (MSPR) or impact your CaRMS applications.

Three or more low professionalism assessments would lead to a referral to the MD Program Professionalism Lead, and this referral could be documented in your record. For further details about professionalism assessments and your MSPR, we encourage you to review the professionalism guidelines here, or contact the Professionalism Theme Lead (note, a single low professionalism assessment from not completing required evaluations will not result in a Check-in).

If you cannot see your evaluations, access MedSIS we recommend clearing your browser cache (note this is different from history) and/or trying a different browser.

If you still cannot see your evaluations or are having other technical difficulties in MedSIS, please contact md.oae@utoronto.ca and/or medsis.ume@utoronto.ca as soon as possible. Including screenshots of the problem/page can be very helpful in resolving issues. We are supposed to receive notices if there are issues with the platform and your timely emails can let us know if there are problems with our notification system.

Feedback provided via LACT and End of Rotation/Fourth Year Electives Course Evaluations are critical to the quality of the MD Program and its individual teachers.

• Individual Teacher Improvement and Portfolios: Like any lifelong learner, teachers are always eager to receive thoughtful and constructive feedback! Teachers who have received at least 3 evaluations can review a report of their amalgamated feedback, including comments, for their personal monitoring and improvement. When applying for promotion, teachers must include a report summarizing their teaching evaluations (if they have at least 3 evaluations).
• Monitoring Teaching Quality and Informing Program Improvement: Clerkship Directors review feedback provided through the End of Rotation evaluations and must respond to areas requiring attention in an annual course report. Directors use this feedback to make changes to the course, such as teaching topics and strategies during orientation and other learning activities. Directors also regularly review teachers flagged as low-scoring via LACT forms. For additional information, see “What happens if I give a teacher a 1 or 2 on the LACT?”
• Accreditation Requirements: the accrediting body, CACMS (Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools), reviews high-level evaluation feedback, and requires a minimum response rate on evaluations for the MD Program to meet accreditation standards.

All evaluation submissions are confidential. We make every effort to ensure student identities are protected when providing evaluation feedback, and no personal student data is captured in evaluation reports.

The Office of Assessment and Evaluation is responsible for sharing all evaluation data with relevant stakeholders. Evaluation feedback is not shared unless there are a minimum of 3 completed evaluations to ensure student confidentiality. This way, teachers cannot link evaluation feedback to an individual student.

Teachers can access their aggregated LACT feedback in MedSIS if they have at least 3 evaluations. They also receive their LACT feedback via an end of year report (which is combined with PGME LACT data). This report only shares data if a teacher receives at least 3 evaluations. If a teacher does not have enough evaluations from the current year to have access to their LACT feedback, the OAE can merge up to three sequential academic years to provide the teacher with at least 3 evaluations.

1. When a LACT with a 1 or 2 is submitted, an alert is immediately available to the Course Director on MedSIS, and an email notification is sent once a week indicating the number of alerts. Details of the completed LACT are only available to the Course Director in MedSIS.
2. In MedSIS, only feedback submitted in the LACT form is provided to the Course Director. Student information is not included. Students’ confidentiality when completing evaluations is of the utmost importance for our program. We will never share this type of data with a teacher or a Course Director.
3. Upon reviewing the submitted LACT, the Course Director could decide to a) monitor the teacher, b) address this with the teacher, or c) escalate if needed through the pathways that have been outlined for this process.
   1. Unless the comments received in the form suggest serious issues (e.g., abusive comments, unprofessional language) or extreme teaching deficiencies, Course Directors do not act on a single alert (beyond monitoring the teacher). It would be the multiplicity of alerts (n>3) that triggers the Course Director to address this with the faculty - this way, student identity is protected. If the comments in the forms are outrageous and require escalation, the Learner Experience Office (LEO) is involved, and we usually look for overall patterns in all the other evaluations received. If a particular comment needs to be presented to a teacher, LEO de-identifies those comments.
4. Teachers cannot review single LACT forms, and only see amalgamated feedback (e.g., all comments about Strengths combined together, all comments about Areas for Improvement combined together).

We would like to highlight the importance of including comments in LACT evaluations as they provide Course Directors and teachers with specific areas or behaviours to monitor or make improvements in. Offering constructive, detailed feedback in the LACT form helps elevate the quality of your educational experience. We would also like to remind you that the Office of Learner Affairs can be a great resource for learners. We encourage you to review this option if you experienced or witnessed mistreatment.