Touchstone Institute, Toronto

Touchstone Institute was established as a not-for-profit organization in 2006 to provide competency assessment services and learning programs for internationally educated health professionals as a component of the Ontario Government’s health human resource strategy. Assessments are designed to determine if examinees meet Canadian competency standards, and learning programs help professionals transition into Canadian training and practice settings.

Touchstone Institute joined the Umbrella Consortium of Assessment Networks (UCAN) in 2014. UCAN has enabled Touchstone Institute’s transition to an online item management system (IMS) and conversion from paper-based to tablet and online assessments. The UCAN applications allow Touchstone Institute to administer assessments far more efficiently with a reduced environmental impact.

In 2015 Touchstone Institute implemented UCAN’s Item Management System to house all exam content and to support exam cycle development and administration. The tOSCE tablet application was first used to score our Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCEs) for Internationally Educated Nurses. This techonolgy was subsequently applied to several other health professional programs. In 2016 the tEXAM application was implemented to deliver Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) exams on tablets. With UCAN’s support in 2017, Touchstone Institute launched its first off-site tablet-based OSCE in the province of Alberta. Now, with upgraded technology and a fleet of tablets, Touchstone Institute is able to conduct simultaneous MCQ and OSCE administrations for most assessments. Touchstone Institute’s membership in UCAN has been integral to growth and development in providing competency assessment for several health professions in Ontario and other Canadian jurisdictions.

UCAN-Partner since 2014