Medical Faculty of the University of Saarland
The Faculty of Medicine of Saarland University, located in Homburg / Saar, has been a member of the UCAN examination association since 2011. Every year, around 300 students begin their medical studies in Homburg. Approximately 27 students enrol in the dental medicine program every year. Training takes place at numerous institutes within the Faculty, at the Saarland University Hospital, and at academic teaching hospitals and doctor’s offices (PJ). Various UCAN tools are used at Homburg for the administration of examinations, such as IMS, tEXAM, tOSCE, and EXaminator. tORAL and EXP are currently in the planning stage.
In the human medicine degree program, the IMS is used in numerous departments for creating examinations. For example, the departments of general medicine, anatomy, gynecology and obstetrics, emergency and pain medicine, anesthesiology, forensic medicine, urology, pediatrics, orthopedics, neurology, internal medicine, and the IMBEI (Institute for Medical Biometry, Epidemiology, and Informatics) all use the IMS. Other departments are currently preparing to switch to the IMS and to tablet-based examinations. In dental studies, the IMS is used for exam preparation, particularly in the subjects of anatomy, EMT (ear, nose and throat medicine), and clinical chemistry.
Since the Department of General Medicine began using tablet-based exams a few years ago, this has led to the faculty-wide adoption of this new examination format. Since the winter semester of 2020, a total of 141 exams has been conducted using tablets. In the winter semester of 2025/2026 alone, 19 departments within our faculty administered 24 exams to 2,588 students. And the trend is upward!
Numerous of our research projects in higher education didactics are investigating how tablet-based exams can improve the content and quality of our teaching. Our study on students’ perspectives regarding the reception of summative and formative feedback during or immediately after the exam has been published. A currently ongoing research project is investigating the extent to which physicians’ clinical reasoning skills can be assessed and examined in key-feature cases.
Membership in the UCAN network is very valuable for the faculty. The IMS system has become an integral part of the examination system at the faculty.
UCAN-Partner since 2011